A HERMENEUTICAL STUDY OF THE SELF- NAMING TRADITION (MAHLAS) IN TURKISH ALEVI LYRIC SONG (DEYIŞ)
Paul V Koerbin
Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
July 2011
College of Arts University of Western Sydney
STATEMENT OF AUTHENTICATION
The work presented in this thesis is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original except as acknowledged in the text. I hereby declare that I have not submitted this material, either in full or in part, for a degree at this or any other institution.
…………………………………..
Paul Koerbin
ii
ABSTRACT
The lyric songs of Turkish oral tradition broadly understood by the term deyiş provide one of the richest perspectives on the historical construction, communal perceptions and creative impetus of Turkish Alevi culture. One of the most evident defining characteristics of the deyiş is the convention in which the poetic persona to which the lyric is attributed, known as the mahlas, is incorporated in the final verse.
While this convention is ubiquitous in this lyric form it has received little scholarly attention particularly in regards to is role in expressive culture. This study approaches Alevi expressive culture by means of focusing on the interpretive force of the mahlas.
The theoretical basis for this study is the tripartite model proposed for ethnomusicological study by Timothy Rice in 1987, by which musical experience may be understood as being historically constructed, socially maintained and individually applied. In applying this model my study pursues an interpretive approach both in terms of identifying interpretive practice and in suggesting interpretive perspectives. This approach follows Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutical perspective as an encounter that seeks not to understand the inner experience of people of another culture, but rather to understand the world that is suggested by music sounds, performance and contexts. The structure of this study follows this hermeneutical epistemology in terms of pre-understanding (encounters in text), explications (the analysis of the form and structure of the text and music) and experiences (interpretive encounters with expressive culture that suggest new understandings). Methods employed for this study include a broad reading and
iii familiarity with Alevi related and initiated publications and scholarship (in Turkish and English); observation of Alevi (and more broadly Turkish) public expressive culture through audio and visual recordings and attending festivals and other events; and participation in Alevi expressive culture and critical reflection through learning the bağlama (Turkish lute) and performing Alevi deyiş informally and in public.
This study begins by considering ‗pre-understandings‘ through the way the persona of the most influential of the Alevi poets, Pir Sultan Abdal, is presented in the pursuit of a historical identity as the lyrics or oral tradition attributed to him have become the basis of canonical textual collections. This chapter suggests the limitation of this approach to understanding while revealing the centrality of the mahlas as the object of study. The second part of the study focuses on explicating the deyiş lyric form and the mahlas as a defining characteristic of that form. These explications suggests the mahlas is more than merely a convention used to identify the author of the lyric but is, rather, a subtle and adaptable traditional textual integer that, while inherently meaningful, is not fixed in its meaning or purpose; and with its immanent associations provides interpretive and creative potential. The third part of the study considers the interpretive and creative potential of the Alevi deyiş and the immanent qualities of the mahlas in performance. Firstly, a context to Alevi public expressive culture is provided by examining a series of commercial recordings produced in the
19κ0s by Arif Sağ, a formative period when Alevis began to be more open and assertive in the articulation of Alevi culture. This is followed by an examination of the interpretive potential of performance through the description and analysis of a performance by Tolga Sağ at the 2002 Pir Sultan Abdal festival in the village of
Banaz in central Turkey. The study further considers the application of the
iv interpretive potential provided by the immanent and associative qualities of the mahlas through a critical reflective analysis of my performances of Alevi deyiş.
Finally, this study includes the largest collection of lyrics by the major Alevi poet Pir
Sultan Abdal yet to appear in English translations. These translations are included to demonstrate and reveal the hermeneutical challenge presented by this material as well as providing broader scholarly access to a substantial representative sample of the lyrics associated with this major Alevi figure.
This study concludes that the mahlas is a richly meaningful textual integer that conveys, with communicative economy, immanent aspects of authority, lineage, communal identity and inclusion. As such, rather than being a simple convention to identify authorship, it is an adaptive yet critical element in the creative and interpretive expression of Alevi culture. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of a rich oral lyric tradition and creative expressive culture that has received relatively little scholarly attention, especially in the English language scholarship, and to reveal the mahlas in the context of oral and expressive culture as a subject deserving of further scholarly study.
v ACKNOWLEDEMENTS
This project would not have commenced, continued nor have been completed without the encouragement, belief and support – moral and practical – of my supervisor Professor Michael Atherton. His judicious and guiding wisdom, and faith in my work, retrieved this endeavour from the brink on many occasions, for which I am greatly indebted.
So much of this project would not have been possible without the friendship and assistance of Eyyup and Nargiz Bevan (Aydoğmuş) who taught me so much about Alevis, playing bağlama and understanding Alevi culture. Eyyup provided invaluable introductions and I am particularly grateful to Nargiz for assistance in transcribing and translating interviews I recorded in Turkey.
In Turkey, I am grateful most of all to Neşe and Işık Onatça for their indefatigable friendship, hospitality and practical assistance providing obscure resources, introductions, and logistical help – not to mention acting as impromptu interpreters!
Many others provided assistance in Turkey including ‗Kızılbaş‘ Mehmet Aslan and İbrahim Aslan and family in Banaz; Salih Kılıç (for the recording of Aşık Nuri); Murtaza Demir; Kazım Genç; Cemal Şener; Rıza Zelyut; Adil Ali Atalay; Hayri Dede; Emel Sungur; Ali Murat İrat, Muharrem Ertaş Dede at the Karacaahmet Dergahı; and especially the late İsmail Onarlı. I am pleased to acknowledge the friendship of Sercihan Dehmen and many memorable days talking of many things including his grandfather Nimri Dede and evenings in Istanbul with his band.
I am grateful to Dertli Divani, Arif Sağ and Mehmet Özbek for the generous time they gave to my clumsy questions and to Ahmet Koçak for facilitating arrangements.
I wish to acknowledge Irene Markoff whose love for, and immense knowledge of, Alevi music she enthusiastically shared with me in our periodic informal email correspondence over the past few years. I express thanks to Mark Soileau, Martin Sökefeld and Ahmet Yürür who generously provided materials; to İrfan Gürel for the precious recordings of Aşık İbreti; and Professor John Miles Foley and the editors and un-named reviewers of a paper I submitted to the Oral Tradition Journal.
Finally I wish to thank my wife Diane for the love, boundless tolerance and support of her too often distracted husband; and my daughter Sabine who has grown up with this project and learned to ask the all too pertinent question ―when will the book be finished?‖
DEDICATION
For my parents, Una and Lloyd Koerbin, who waited so long and for whom this means so much.
vi A NOTE ON TRANSLATION AND ORTHOGRAPHY
All translations from the Turkish are my own unless otherwise indicated.
This thesis involves reference to a considerable number Turkish sources and Turkish terminologies which provides certain challenges for consistent renderings. I have generally followed Turkish terminologies and forms rather than translating them, the term mahlas, the subject of this thesis, which I have not rendered as ‗pen-name‘, being the most obvious example. I have generally added the English plural ‗-s‘ to Turkish terms rather than retain the Turkish plural ‗lar/ler‟. So for aşık I use the plural aşık-s not aşıklar. Occasionally this approach would produce a monstrous and unpronounceable mouthful in English and in such cases I have retained the Turkish plural, as in deyişler rather than deyiş-s. For the same reason I have preferred Alevilik rather than Alevi-ism. In regards to names I have used Turkish forms except when they are very common in English, so in place of the Turkish Hüseyin and Muhammed I have used Husayn and Muhammad.
In quoting Turkish sources I have used the orthography of the original rather than attempt any standardisation. This is perhaps most evident in the variable use of the circumflex in some Turkish words that have Persian or Arabic origins. So, for example, aşık will also appear as âşık and the name Hatayi as Hatâyî. Ostensible inconsistencies may be most apparent in a number of the texts used for the translations. Since many of these are from early twentieth century sources transcribed from Ottoman script by the editors modern Turkish orthography is variable and vowel harmony may not always be present since Ottoman, unlike modern Turkish, generally did not apply labial harmony (that is, in respect to close high vowels ı, u, i and ü). Again, I have used the texts as presented in the sources consulted and have not attempted any standardisation.
vii TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract ...... iii Acknowledements ...... vi A note on translation and orthography ...... vii
1. Introduction ...... 1
1.1 Statement about the research project...... 1 1.2 Need for research ...... 5 1.3 Theoretical considerations and model ...... 6 1.4 The structure of the thesis ...... 9 1.5 Materials and methodology ...... 11 1.6 Survey of relevant literature ...... 18 1.6.1 Pir Sultan Abdal ...... 19 1.6.2 Deyiş ...... 25 1.6.3 Mahlas ...... 25 1.6.4 Alevi music ...... 27
2. Encounters: Pir Sultan Abdal, Kul Himmet and the mahlas persona in history, legend and text ...... 31
2.1 Introduction ...... 31 2.2 Alevilik (Alevi-ism) ...... 33 2.2.1 Foundational beliefs ...... 40 2.2.2 Authority: ocakzade and dedelik ...... 42 2.2.3 Transmission: Alevi aşık-s ...... 46 2.3 Pir Sultan Abdal ...... 53 2.3.1 Introduction: the distraction of identity...... 53 2.3.2 The (re)construction of historical identity...... 55 2.3.3 The legend of Pir Sultan Abdal ...... 66 2.3.4 Hızır Paşa ...... 71 2.3.5 The typology of the Pir Sultan Abdal mahlas – what‘s in a name? ... 75 2.3.6 Themes and subjects ...... 82 2.4 The case of Kul Himmet and ‗üstadım‘ ...... 89 2.4.1 Kul Himmet Üstadım ...... 92 2.4.2 Fleshing out the persona: Aşık İbrahim and Hacik Kız ...... 96 2.5 Summary: the deyiş and the mahlas from encounters to explications ..... 106
3. Explications: the deyiş lyric form and the mahlas taking tradition ...... 109
3.1 Introduction ...... 109 3.2 Deyiş ...... 109 3.2.1 Definitions ...... 110 3.2.2 Terminologies ...... 113 3.2.3 Deyiş or nefes ...... 115 3.2.4 Structural characteristics – syllables and symbol...... 117 3.2.5 Specific genre forms and their relationship to deyiş ...... 120 3.2.6 Themes and subjects in the deyiş ...... 123 3.2.7 Deyiş – viewing expressive context in textual variants ...... 127
viii 3.3 Mahlas ...... 137 3.3.1 Terminology ...... 138 3.3.2 The signature verse convention in other traditions ...... 145 3.3.3 Comparative perspectives briefly considered ...... 146 3.3.4 Types of mahlas naming ...... 149 3.3.5 Dertli Divani and the tradition of spiritual authority ...... 153 3.3.6 Aşık Zakiri and the master-pupil tradition ...... 157 3.3.7 Dreams ...... 161 3.3.8 Sefil Selimi and the mahlas as a point of commitment ...... 163 3.3.9 Edip Harabi and Melûli – the transcendent life and the mahlas as rhetorical perspective ...... 167 3.3.10 Appropriating the mahlas – Aşık Ali İzzet Özkan ...... 173 3.3.11 Finding meaning in the mahlas taking tradition ...... 176 3.3.12 Finding meaning in the structure and form of the mahlas ...... 178 3.4 Summary: the deyiş and mahlas from explications to experiences ...... 184
4. Experiences: interpreting the Alevi deyiş and the mahlas in expressive culture...... 186
4.1 Introduction ...... 186 4.2 Alevi music ...... 187 4.2.1 Sound characteristics ...... 189 4.2.2 The bağlama ...... 190 4.2.3 Cadential phrases ...... 196 4.3 Duaz-ı imam as a referential and defining musical form ...... 198 4.4 Commercial recordings and Alevi expression ...... 206 4.4.1 Pir Sultan Abdal deyiş in the 1960s and 1970s ...... 207 4.5 Arif Sağ ‗ölür dirilir‘ – strategic death and renewal and the pathway to Muhabbet ...... 211 4.5.1 ‗Was it I who created my exile?‘ – Sağ‘s rebirth as a recording artist ...... 213 4.5.2 The Şan Tiyatrasu concert and the commencement of a new era .... 217 4.5.3 ‗I have come to be a human being‘ ...... 219 4.5.4 Muhabbet series 1-5 (1984-1987) ...... 229 4.6 Tolga Sağ at the 2002 Pir Sultan Abdal festival ...... 245 4.6.1 Festival background ...... 245 4.6.2 Entextualising the performance as an interpretive act ...... 254 4.6.3 Analysis of Tolga Sağ‘s festival performance ...... 256 4.7 Critical reflection: a performance approach to the interpretation of Alevi deyiş...... 273 4.7.1 Introduction ...... 273 4.7.2 Discussion of performances ...... 275 4.7.3 The National Folk Festival performance, 25 March 2005 ...... 280 4.7.4 The performance setting and performance described ...... 286 4.7.5 ‗Sonic Circus‘ performance, Sydney, 10 November 2002 ...... 295 4.7.6 ‗Sivas anma‘ performance, Parramatta (Sydney), 2κ June 200κ ..... 300 4.7.7 ‗Mystic Music and the Memory of Martyrs: an introduction to Alevi music‘ National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2 November 2005 ...... 303
ix 4.8 Summary: the deyiş and mahlas from experiences to new understandings ...... 310
5. Translations: ‘An extreme case of hermeneutical difficulty’ ...... 312
5.1 Introduction ...... 312 5.2 Pir Sultan Abdal deyiş in English translation ...... 315 5.3 Sources of the texts translated and editorial issues ...... 316 5.4 On translating the mahlas and other terms ...... 319
5.5 Pir Sultan Abdal deyişler ...... 321 5.5.1 Açılın kapılar Şah‟a gidelim ...... 321 5.5.2 Ali Ali deyü ne inilersin ...... 322 5.5.3 Ben dervişim diye göğsün açarsın...... 323 5.5.4 Benim pîrim Şah-ı Merdân Ali‟dir ...... 324 5.5.5 Bir çift turna geldi Kars illerinden ...... 325 5.5.6 Bir güzelin âşıkıyım ağalar ...... 326 5.5.7 Bir nefesçik söyliyelim...... 327 5.5.8 Bir ulu kervandık kalktık Musuldan ...... 328 5.5.9 Bize de Banaz‟da Pir Sultan derler ...... 329 5.5.10 Bu yıl bu dağların karı erimez ...... 330 5.5.11 Bülbül olsam varsam gelsem ...... 331 5.5.12 Cennet‟ten Ali‟ye bir niyaz geldi...... 333 5.5.13 Çeke çeke ben bu dertten ölürüm ...... 334 5.5.14 Çekilip Kırklara vardık ...... 335 5.5.15 Çokan beri yollarını gözlerim ...... 336 5.5.16 Diken arasında bir gül açıldı ...... 337 5.5.17 Dün gece seyrimde çoştuydu dağlar ...... 338 5.5.18 Ey benim dîvane gönlüm ...... 339 5.5.19 Ezelden divane etti aşk beni ...... 340 5.5.20 Fetva vermiş koca başlı kör müftü ...... 341 5.5.21 Gel benim sarı tanburam ...... 342 5.5.22 Gel seninle ahd ü peyman edelim ...... 343 5.5.23 Gelin canlar bir olalım ...... 344 5.5.24 Gelmiş iken bir habercik sorayım ...... 345 5.5.25 Gelsin ikrarına beli diyenler ...... 346 5.5.26 Gözleyi gözleyi gözüm oldu ...... 347 5.5.27 Gurbet elde bir hal geldi başıma ...... 348 5.5.28 Haktan inayet olursa ...... 349 5.5.29 Hazret-i Ali‟nin devri yürüye ...... 350 5.5.30 Hazret-i Şah‟ın avazı ...... 351 5.5.31 Ilgıt ılgıt esen seher yelleri ...... 352 5.5.32 İptida bir sofu Şah‟a varınca ...... 353 5.5.33 Kahpe felek sana n‟ettim n‟eyledim ...... 354 5.5.34 Karşıda görünen ne güzel yayla ...... 355 5.5.35 Koca başlı koca kadı ...... 356 5.5.36 Koyun beni Hak aşkına yanayım ...... 357 5.5.37 Kul olayım kalem tutan eline...... 358 5.5.38 Medet ya Muhammet medet ya Ali ...... 359 5.5.39 Ötme bülbül ötme şen değil bağım ...... 360
x 5.5.40 Safasına cefasına dayandım ...... 361 5.5.41 Seher vaktı kalkan kervan ...... 362 5.5.42 Serseri girme meydana ...... 362 5.5.43 Sultan Suyu gibi çağlayıp akma ...... 363 5.5.44 Şu kanlı zalimin ettiği işler ...... 364 5.5.45 Şu karşı yaylada göç katar katar ...... 365 5.5.46 Türbesin üsüne nakş eylediler ...... 366 5.5.47 Uyur idik uyardılar ...... 367 5.5.48 Yine dosttan haber geldi ...... 368 5.5.49 Yürü bire Hıdır Paşa ...... 369 5.5.50 Yürüyüş eyledi Urum üstüne ...... 370
5.6 Pir Muhammed ...... 371 5.6.1 Pir elinden elifi tac urundum ...... 371
5.7 Aşık İsmail ...... 372 5.7.1 Aradılar Pir Sultan‟ın aslını ...... 372
5.8 Kul Himmet ...... 374 5.8.1 Her sabah her sabah ötüşür kuşlar ...... 374 5.8.2 Hükmünü geçiren hep cümle nâsa ...... 376 5.8.3 Bu gün bize Pîr geldi ...... 377
5.9 Aşık Veysel ...... 381 5.9.1 Beni hor görme kardaşım ...... 381
5.10 Nimri Dede ...... 382 5.10.1 İkilik kirinin içimden atıp ...... 382 5.10.2 İnsan olmaya geldim ...... 383
5.11 Muhlis Akarsu ...... 384 5.11.1 Açığım yok kapalım yok dünyada ...... 384 5.11.2 Gurbeti ben mi yarattım ...... 385
5.12 Aşık Mahzuni Şerif ...... 386 5.12.1 Fırıldak adam ...... 386
6. Conclusion: 'I am Pir Sultan Abdal' ...... 387
Bibliography ...... 394 Audio-visual materials cited ...... 417 Appendix A – Track listing of accompanying CDs ...... 421 Appendix B – Slides from National Library of Australia performance ...... 423
xi 1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Statement about the research project
This research project arose from a personal and ostensibly simple dilemma that can be stated as questions that came to occupy my mind when I first encountered the songs of the Turkish Alevi poet Pir Sultan Abdal and other Turkish Alevi aşık-s: what does it mean that in these traditional lyrics the poet appears to sign his (or her) name; and, as a musician attracted to these songs, how can I, particularly as an outsider, find a meaningful way to perform them?
Why this should be a dilemma is in some respects quite apparent. As an outsider approaching an expressive culture that cannot possibly be fully or even adequately comprehended in early encounters, there are significant issues of language, elements of musical style and learning instruments (among other things) to address and resolve. Beyond these there are of course the deeper issues concerned with coming to know, or having at the very least a functional awareness of, the culture from which this expressive art is constructed and maintained and from which it emerges into public spaces. Indeed is there a valid context in which, as an outsider, I was able to engage with this expressive culture with integrity and functional honesty?
Perhaps not all musics pose these issues in the same way or to the same degree. My experience as a professional performer in the mid to late 19κ0s performing ‗multi- cultural‘ in Australia (later to acquire the label ‗world music‘) is such that, at the time, I did not feel the demand to engage with musics beyond their superficial attractiveness. This may be viewed by some as musical ‗tourism‘ but it was not my
1 experience that this activity was contemptuous or deliberately exploitative of those musics, but rather reflected a joyous, and at times naïve, encounter with new and dazzlingly rich cultures. It was out of this context that I first encountered Alevi songs
(deyiş); however my reaction, though initially intuitive and focused on the musical sound, was different because this music demanded of me a greater challenge and deeper commitment to its understanding and an engagement that required considerable work and commitment as an outsider. The songs I heard were clearly substantial and dense in their textual content and even puzzled non-Alevi Turks who
I asked about them. While my initial attraction was a result of the musical sound, they were not songs that could be adequately encountered as merely instrumental music or music for which the words may be considered incidental to the colourful sounds and infectious rhythms of commercial ‗world music‘. Further, Alevi culture, when I first encountered it in the mid-1980s, was in a process of finding its first concerted, or at least confident, public expressions after a long history of concealment and suspicious reticence. Thus my own introduction to these songs coincided with the dynamic, prolific and nuanced process of Alevis expressing, in their own voice, their social and cultural identity.
When issues concerning Alevi identity, particularly in respect to social and political objectives, began to emerge and be publicly expressed in the 1980s, it also attracted the attention of non-Turkish scholars, particularly those working in the fields of anthropology, sociology and ethnomusicology. While this scholarship has informed my own interest and scholarly research, my research project remains focused on the curious textual integer that intrigued and challenged me from my early encounters with Alevi song. I understood these songs to be folk songs: that is, songs constructed
2 and maintained in an oral culture whose authors, if there were an individual author, had long been appropriated into the anonymous tradition. Thus, while still cultural property, being understood as such they seemed more open to etic engagement, indeed some sort of expressive appropriation, from an outsider. However, one of the first discoveries I made of these songs is that they were apparently ‗signed‘ and attributed to authorial identities. It was this that created, for me as a performer, something of an obstructing presence, or certainly a presence that signified an authority and the intimation of more complex deeper contexts of which I should be wary or, at the very least, aware. Indeed, despite my attraction to this music and my motivations as a performer, for some time I actively avoided attempts to learn the songs and certainly entertained no intention to perform them. I was unsure how to approach them, though I was attracted to them and grew more so in my self- conscious estrangement from them. It therefore seemed to me that this ‗signing‘ convention in the songs was of signal importance to their character and may perform a pivotal role and have functional or interpretive significance in the performance of the songs. I believe that my interest was assured by the apparent ubiquity of the naming convention in these deyiş, and as such its importance seemed self-evident.
Such interest was also prepared for, in some part, by my prior listening to troubadour and trouvère songs where the sometime climactic declamation of names in the chansons of Thibaut de Champagne, Peire Vidal, Marcabru or Gace Brulé, seemed to bring the works to life with an overt and particular presence.
I am, of course, aware that it is perhaps my etic perspective that emphasises this particular aspect of the songs, since a more encompassing and full understanding was at the time of this encounter not available to me due to my basic language skills and
3 limited awareness and understanding of Alevi culture. That is, for the emic listener, perhaps this was merely unremarkable. While recognising that such an etic perspective does not promise the same understanding or revelation of an emic participant in the tradition, I undertook this research project with the objective that in seeking to understand the naming convention in the Alevi deyiş for myself, my interpretive journey may also contribute to a wider awareness of the rich expressive tradition of Alevi lyric song. As John Miles Foley (1995, 140) states:
One must start, I believe, by admitting that outsiders to a performance tradition can seldom if ever achieve a mother-tongue fluency in a register outside their own cultural repertoire, even if the tradition is ongoing and readily available for study. There will always be an endemic shortfall for the ‗analytic‘ or ‗etic‘ interloper, a comparative lack of the kind of first hand knowledge gained only through active, iterative experience of the tradition. Hopefully, the external perspective available to the outsider will in part compensate for that shortfall: he or she may be able to offer new insights by intentionally stepping outside the performance arena, by citing comparative material from other traditions, and so on.
Since this project emerges from the dilemma faced by an etic performer, or at least the dilemma in pursuing the possibility for such performance, it will not remain entirely outside the performance arenas. Foley is really suggesting the possibility of
‗entextualisation‘ whereby the performance of culture may be viewed not just in its
‗context‘ but as a coherent text in itself in which we may discover how textual integers suggest meaning. This would seem to be a fundamentally phenomenological approach in which the process of hermeneutical appropriation is a reflective process to actualise the meaning of texts through self-understanding. This returns me to the objective of this research project, which is how to interpret – and perform
4 interpretation with – the ‗signed‘ songs of the Alevi aşık-s including, especially, the greatest and at once the most representative, extraordinary and engaging of them all,
Pir Sultan Abdal.
1.2 Need for research
Alevi expressive culture, specifically the poetic musical works in their performance context, has received relatively little scholarly attention, particularly in the English speaking world. Thus a very rich creative tradition has not been usefully investigated and researched and made generally more accessible for the purpose of comparative studies. Indeed even in Turkey this is the case, and while there has been a substantial amount of publication on issues in respect to Alevilik (Alevi cultural identity) since the mid-1980s, and there are countless collections of anthologised deyiş texts, there are few interpretive studies of this expressive form and those that do exist are concerned mostly with elucidating general themes, subjects and structures. In particular, the naming convention in the traditional lyric form (the deyiş), which we can refer to as the mahlas tradition (mahlas geleneği), has received little consideration beyond typology and categorisation in Turkish scholarly literature and virtually none in English language and comparative scholarship.
The aim of this study, therefore, is to provide a modest contribution to the accessibility of this rich but little investigated aspect of Turkish, and specifically
Alevi, oral culture, through the presentation of interpretive materials, including a representative collection of translations. In particular in respect to the poetic persona of Pir Sultan Abdal my study will be of use to researchers with interests in traditional orality, music and performance, the traditional lyric form and authorial identity.
5
1.3 Theoretical considerations and model
The theoretical structure of this thesis is the tripartite model proposed for ethnomusicological study by Timothy Rice in his article "Toward the remodeling of ethnomusicology" (Rice 1987) and expanded and applied in his book May it Fill
Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music (Rice 1994) . Rice formulated his model following anthropologist Clifford Geertz's claims regarding symbolic systems as being historically constructed, socially maintained and individually applied.
Moreover, in order to undercut the antinomy between the objectivity of musicology and the subjectivity of musical experience, Rice promotes an epistemology based on the phenomenological hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur1. Phenomenology centred hermeneutics offers the prospect of moving beyond authorial (composer) intentions
(Benson 2003, xii-xiii) and moving towards reflective answers to questions
―concerning what we can know about music, and how we can know it‖ (Titon 1997,
93). Rice proposes Ricoeur's philosophical perspective as an encounter that seeks, not to understand the inner experience of people of another culture – the fundament etic impasse – but rather to understand the world that is suggested by music sounds, performance and contexts. To Rice‘s method I would also add the process of
‗entextualising‘ which Bauman and Briggs (1990, 73) describe as ―the process of rendering discourse extractable, of making a stretch of linguistic production into a unit – a text – that can be lifted out of its interactional setting‖. However my purpose for such entextualisation is not essentially to decontextualise or abandon context since, as Bauman and Briggs suggest, the extractable text ―carries elements of its
1 Particularly in respect to Ricoeur‘s application of phenomenological hermeneutics to the human sciences, for which my principal reference text is Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (Ricoeur 1998).
6 history and use within it‖ (Bauman and Briggs 1990, 73). As Silverstein and Urban
(1996, 4) point out, ―different interpreters, understanding themselves to be – or potentially to be – in different relations with the original source discourse, produce different texts‖ and my purpose in entextualisation is to more clearly focus on the immanent and associative aspects of the performance.
The structural model of my thesis also incorporates aspects of this epistemology based on Rice‘s formulations from Ricoeur‘s concept of the ‗hermeneutic arc‘ in terms of pre-understanding (in which I include ideas of historical and textual encounters), explanations (the explication of textual and musical forms) and interpretation, the ―anchorage of the arc in the ground of lived experience‖ (Ricoeur
1998, 164). Rice calls this interpretive process – the hermenutical arc – a ―self conscious task‖ to bring pre-conceptions and pre-understandings ―to language‖ (Rice
1997, 115) and finally aims ―to move from pre-understanding to explanation to new understandings‖ (Rice 1997, 117).
While this thesis has an essentially ethnomusicological objective that is, in a simple characterisation, to explore the performance of a specific musical repertoire from the perspective of an etic participant-observer, the nature of the subject requires an approach that extends beyond any notions of a limited defininiton of the ethnomusicological discipline. In this approach I am influenced by John Miles Foley and the caution he suggests in respect to the study of oral traditional aesthetics.
It would be only too easy to fall into the clutches of one or another current literary theory and to communicate whatever can be discovered about oral traditional art soley through the exclusivist metaphor of that particular
7 theoretical approach. That would be a serious error, not because the approach itself might not be interesting and worthy, but rather because whatever insights are gained must necessarily be as free as possible of specialist assumptions in order to be most useful to the widest range of scholars. If we communicate exclusively through one or another critical methodology, then the possibility remains that the ground gained is no more than a product – perhaps an illusory product – of that methodology. (Foley 1991a, xii-xiii)
For practical considerations, of course, the theoretical framework is necessary and the discipline of ethnomusicology has proven a flexible and expansive (and of course disputable) centre from which to engage with many disciplines such as literature
(including textual studies and orality), folkore, anthropology, history and critical reflection.
Rice proposed his model as a response to what he perceived as a separation of music from context in Merriam‘s influential model involving the study of three analytical levels including conceptualisation about music, behaviour in relation to music and music sound itself. Rice does not reject Merriam‘s analytical levels but suggests that they can operate more flexibly within the model he proposes. In Rice‘s model the study of musical sound is less prominent – though certainly not absent – while people‘s actions in creating, experiencing and using music is the objective of enquiry. Rice‘s tripartite model involves processes of:
1. historical construction which includes the process of change and re- encounters with forms and legacies of the past in the present; 2. social maintenance or the way music is sustained, maintained and altered by socially constructed institutions and belief systems; and, 3. individual adaption, application and experience.
8
As Rice notes, his model, particularly in respect to the process of individual adaption, application and experience moves his ethnomusicology closer to the humanities (Rice 1987, 467) and in application the model ―demands a move from description to interpretation and explanation‖ (Rice 1987, 480).
1.4 The structure of the thesis
This thesis is structured in four chapters, the first three chapters aligning with the
Rice‘s characterisation of the ‗hermeneutic arc‘, beginning with pre-understanding, moving through explanation to arrive at intepretation based on experiencing the songs in a variety of expressive contexts. The processes of Rice‘s model – historical construction, social maintenance and individual application – may also be seen to align generally with the structure of the thesis while understanding that they are not constrained to this structure and inform the thesis more pervasively.
1. In the first chapter, which I headline as ‗Encounters‘, I reflect upon ‗pre-
understandings‘ as an encounter with the principal catalyst for my study, Pir
Sultan Abdal, as seen from the major preoccupations of the literature that
surrounds his historical identity. This encounter suggests that the pursuit of
authorial identity and consequent understandings of the mahlas as essentially
an authorial signature is necessarily limiting. In order to provide context for
this encounter I identify significant aspects of Alevi belief and lineage
structure; and in order to broaden the prespective on the focus of historical
identity suggested by the mahlas I also discuss text and identity in respect to
9 the poet Kul Himmet considered along with Pir Sultan Abdal as one of the
seven great and seminal Alevi poets.
2. In the second chapter, which I headline as ‗Explications‘, I move on to
examine the lyric form that is central to Alevi expressive culture, the deyiş,
and what I propose is the principle and defining traditional textual integer of
that lyric form, the ‗self-naming‘ device known as the mahlas. By analysing
the form and structure of the deyiş and mahlas I assert that in the deyiş form
the mahlas is the principal textual integer that potentiates the immanent
associative qualities that constitute a significant traditional referentiality2, and
demonstrates an absence of fixity in form and application that engenders
creativity and interpretation within a socially maintained expressive culture.
3. In the third chapter, which I headline as ‗Experiences‘, I take an interpretive
approach to the Alevi deyiş using the mahlas as a referential textual integer
while examining three perspectives of expressive culture and individual
interpretation in performance. Firstly, I consider a series of recordings made
by the influential Alevi musician Arif Sağ in the 1980s; secondly, a
performance by his son, Tolga Sağ, at the Pir Sultan Abdal Festival in Banaz
(Turkey) in 2002; and, thirdly, a critical reflective analysis of four of my own
performances of Alevi deyiş in different performance contexts in Australia
between 2002 and 2008.
2 I follow Foley in regard to the concept of traditional referentiality, for which see especially his book Immanent Art (Foley 1991a). Traditional referentiality understood in Foley‘s words ―entails the invoking of a context that is enormously larger and more echoic than the text or work itself, that brings the lifeblood of generations of poems and performances to the individual performance or text‖; and where ―traditional elements reach out of the immediate instance in which they appear to the fecund totality of the entire tradition, defined synchronically and diachronically, and they bear meanings as wide and deep as the tradition they encode‖ (Foley 1991a, 7).
10
4. In the fourth chapter, which I headline ‗Translations‘, I include a
representative sample of translations of deyiş attributed to Pir Sultan Abdal,
along with a small number of translations of deyiş of other poets given
prominent consideration in this thesis. The functional purpose of this is to
provide the first substantial body of Pir Sultan Abdal texts in English
translation – fifty translations in total. However, this chapter is not intended
as an appendix but rather as further demonstrating the hermeneutical
objectives of this study. The process of interpretation is an act of translation,
just as the act of translating is an act of interpretation, and much of this thesis
necessarily arises from the central processes of interpreting and translating.
While translating is perhaps a performance in itself, the act of committing the
translations to text is also a (re)contextualising process that betrays the limits
of interpretation, and so my purpose in this chapter is also to suggest the
ongoing requirement of the hermeneutic endeavour3.
1.5 Materials and methodology
The methods employed for this study follow three paths:
1. A broad reading and familiarity with the literature in English and Turkish relating to Alevi culture, society, poetry and history; together with contextual studies in respect to Turkish society, oral traditions, and self-naming conventions.
3 Translations included in this chapter are referred to throughout this study. The Translations chapter is therefore conceived as ‗hyper-linked‘ and the reader is encouraged to read to the translations referred to in the text as the thesis progresses, and perhaps read others along the way.
11 2. The observation (aural and visual) of Alevi and broader Turkish expressive culture through sound recordings, videos, television and the Internet; field trips to Turkey; and attendance at events and festivals in Turkey and Australia.
3. Experiencing and participating in the expression of Alevi culture through learning the bağlama (long-necked Turkish lute) and performing deyiş in concerts and informal gatherings; and participating in seminars and other events including Alevi ritual gatherings known as cem.
The materials informing this study are for the most part published materials including many texts emanating from Alevi writers and artists. Publication in
Turkish on Alevi culture and belief has been considerable since the 1980s while numerous collections of folk lyric texts, including many devoted to Pir Sultan Abdal, have emerged since the 1920s. Of particular interest are many publications largely constituted of interviews, reportage and re-publication, a phenomenon perhaps peculiar to the Turkish tradition of publishing cheap editions, which in many cases may be considered as primary rather than secondary resource material4. Indeed it was suggested by Tord Olsson at a conference on Alevi identity in Istanbul in 1996
(Olsson 1998) that much of this publishing activity that has formed part of the public discourse and expression of Alevis and should be considered primary research material5. As the anthropologist David Shankland characterises them, they are
―explorations of attitudes and beliefs which have previously been spoken rather than written down … they constitute in great part an oral tradition made literate‖
4 Examples include books by Aydın (2004; 1997), Gerçek (1995), Yürükoğlu (1993), Kalkan (2004) and Poyraz (2007). Indeed one such publication even consists, for the most part, of transcriptions from a series of television programs featuring Alevi performers, aşık-s and other identities (Zenger 2000). 5 As an example of the sometimes overt nature of this discourse, a dispute over the establishment of principal Pir Sultan Abdal organisations produced two substantial monograph publications on the claims, firstly by H. Nedim Şahhüseyinoğlu followed by a response by Ali Balkız, both interestingly published by the same publishing house (Şahhüseyinoğlu 2001; Balkız 2002). Many copies of Balkız‘s book were distributed freely to attendees at the 2002 Pir Sultan Abdal festival in Banaz.
12 (Shankland 1999, 132), although Olsson cautions against seeing them as merely
―sullied versions of pure oral traditions‖ and suggest they should be treated ―in certain respects as ritual objects … to be studied in their own rights‖ (Olsson 1998).
The especial value of such materials is in helping to understand the nature of discourse among Alevi artists, writers and community representatives.
The objective of my method of concentrating on this published material has been to develop the resources and an interpretive sensibility that is cognisant and revealing of the traditions and discourse of the (Alevi and Turkish) culture from which the songs, that are the subject of my study, emanate. Reading these materials including reported and transcribed interviews and other discourse afford a viable means to observe what DuBois calls a native hermeneutic6 in as much as I, as the scholar, observe this discourse without intervention. In my approach to the material I have sought to apply a ―way of reading‖ that Foley calls ―Immanent Art [which] seeks to open up traditional referentiality, to understand how the single instance resonates with implicit meaning‖ (Foley 2002, 117).
I aim to apply an interpretive focus to the mahlas, it being understood as fundamentally an oral traditional element defined as such by its ubiquity in the deyiş form and being an apparant acknowledgement of authorship transmitted orally within the text itself. I have approached the mahlas not constrained by understanding it merely as a formulaic entity or prosaic signature – though it may be that too – but as a textual integer encapsulating the vitality of Alevi expressive culture. While ‗text‘ may be understood as a primary focus of my thesis, literally in the texts of the deyiş
6 On native hermeneutics see DuBois (1996; 2006). DuBois‘s typology of native hermeneutics is heuristic, as the researcher attends to and appreciates the norms of the community and, particularly, the ―communal modes of interpreting traditional genres such as the lyric‖ (DuBois 1996, 263).
13 and interpretively in the entextualisation of performances and process of translation, the proposition of the mahlas as a textual integer with immanent meaning, directs us to the fundamental orality of the deyiş and, consequentally, that meaning manifests in the oral, performative and expressive context. As Foley (1991a, 7) explains:
Traditional elements reach out of the immediate instance in which they appear to the fecund totality of the entire tradition, defined synchronically and diachronichally, and they bear meanings as wide and deep as the tradition they encode. The ‗how‘ of the traditional idiom, while overlapping at some points with the ‗how‘ of the literary text, also – and crucially – includes an extratextual dimension uniquely the domain of oral traditional art. This idiom is liberating rather than imprisoning, centrifugal rather than centripetal, explosively connotative rather than claustrophobically clichéd.
While taking an approach that recognises the deyiş form and mahlas integer as fundamentally an oral tradition, I do not make claims to being exhaustive in my consideration of the vast body of traditional Alevi lyric, or even those of Pir Sultan
Abdal; rather, I have sought to reveal interpretive possibilites, as DuBois (2006, 5) states by ―allowing particular moments and examples to come into focus as evocative of greater wholes‖. DuBois in his approach to the lyric of the oral traditions of
Northern Europe seeks to centre the interpretive act as one that is ―governed by traditions associated with the lyric songs themselves‖ (DuBois 2006, 243) and his approach tries to ―provide a glimpse of the richly nuanced and effective repertoire of interpretive stategies that communities recognize, assert, and maintain alongside the songs they perform‖ (DuBois 2006, 5). This approach remains interpretive, and essentially an etic perspective, but it seeks to derive interpretive meaning – or
14 interpretive access – as far as possible from the ‗native hermeneutics‘ of the subject tradition7.
I have also been influenced in my interpretive method by DuBois‘s typology of interpretive strategies, particularly in respect to the associative axis of attribution in which ―a song becomes meaningful by association with a composer or performer connected with the song, or narrative character mentioned in the song‘s text‖
(DuBois 2006, 3). DuBois sees ― the act of attribution and the audience‘s recourse to it as an interpretive strategy that marks this traditional response to a lyric‖ (DuBois
1996, 255). Indeed the mahlas tradition suggests itself as a richly worked example of such an interpretive strategy and, sui generis, a revelatory native hermeneutic.
In exploring the expressive aspects of Alevi deyiş I have made use of a large collection of commercial audio cassette and compact disc recordings mostly produced in Turkey and collected both in Australia and in Turkey since the mid-
1980s8. From the mid-1990s Kalan Müzik in particular has produced many valuable
‗archive series‘ – arşiv serisi – editions of historic recordings on CD which has made early commercial and some source recordings available. For the same reasons that the many published texts expressing Alevi perspectives represent primary research materials and the evidence of native hermeneutics, these recordings, particularly as a corpus, represent a significant expression of Alevi cultural engagement with a wider community as well as with itself.
7 See DuBois (DuBois 1996) for a discussion of native hermeneutics. 8 Only those recordings I have specifically cited are included in the discography (audio-visual materials cited) though many others have informed my understanding.
15 While location fieldwork was not the primary methodology for this study, I made two specific field trips to Turkey in 2002 and 20079 during which I made audio recordings of performances at the Pir Sultan Abdal Etkinlileri (Festivities) in the village of Banaz near Sivas in eastern Turkey. Other recordings of performances were made in 2002 in Ankara and Istanbul at Alevi commemorative events. In addition, I have made use of field notes and some recordings of generally informal communications with performers and researchers including Dertli Divani, Arif Sağ,
Mehmet Özbek, Neşe Ayışıt Onatça and İsmail Onarlı.
My method in undertaking this study has also involved participant observation. This was centred on my learning of and performing with the bağlama and my informal and social association with an Alevi family living in Canberra, Australia. My experience with the bağlama was initially (and has remained for the most part) self- taught, learning from recordings and bağlama methods. However, in the late 1980s I took a small number of lessons with Sabahattin Akdağcık a former professional musician and arranger in Turkey who had worked with performers such Esin Engin,
Zeki Müren and Bülent Ersoy and who was then living in Sydney, Australia.
Although originally from Tarsus, he had studied in Erzurum, had known or worked with significant Alevi performers and aşık-s such as Ali İzzet Özkan and Arif Sağ; and was generally very knowledgeable and accomplished in the performance of both folk and classical forms of Turkish music. Later in the 1990s I met, took lessons from and played regularly with Eyyup Aydoğmuş (Bevan) an Alevi from Divriği.
Eyyup was not a professional musician but is an accomplished and knowledgeable singer and bağlama player. For a number of years while he and his family lived in
9 A number of other short trips to Turkey during the 1980s and 1990s travelling widely in Anatolia, while not specifically related to my research, may also be noted in providing the basis for my understanding of Turkish and familiarity with Turkish culture more generally.
16 Canberra we met weekly to play music, talk and socialise and it was from Eyyup and his wife Nargiz (a Kurdish Alevi whose family is from Tunceli and who is also a fine expressive singer) that I learned much about Alevi culture and music. We performed a number of times together at festivals and concerts and through Eyyup I was also able to attend and participate in a number of cem-s (Alevi ritual services) in Sydney,
Melbourne and Mildura. Eyyup performed the service of zakir for these cem-s and on two occasions I was invited to participate in the services performing on bağlama.
As background material, I have also made use of numerous video tapes of performances recorded from live events and television programs of musical performances, cem rituals and interviews. Notable among which is a video recording of the Bin Yılın Türküsü events staged in Cologne in 2000 and widely disseminated on video (including in Australia) in the 1990s. These materials, like many of the cassette tapes were purchased from Turkish video rental stores during the 1980s and
1990s although some of this material has appeared more recently on the Internet. In the course of researching and writing this thesis the World Wide Web emerged as the pre-eminent medium for social expression. In fundamental respects the Internet and
Web has made this thesis possible by providing remote access to research materials, the discovery (and purchase) of Turkish published resources and recordings while living at the other side of the world; as well as enabling communication with scholars and acquaintances through email. However, the expression of Alevi culture on the
Web has not been a focus of this study although services such as YouTube and forums sharing out-of-print recordings have provided the only access to some valuable research materials.
17 1.6 Survey of relevant literature
The scope of this thesis has necessitated a broad reading approach to literature in a range of disciplines including ethnomusicology, folklore, literature, history, sociology and anthropology. In order to understand the historical, socio-political and cultural contexts in which this study is situated I have consulted works covering kızılbaş history – particularly Ottoman and Safavid history of the sixteenth century – and Alevilik (Alevi-ism) more generally. My reading in these areas relies heavily, though not exclusively, on English language texts which are referenced in the bibliography. In respect to scholarly studies of Alevis and Alevilik it should be noted that since the late 1990s publications have appeared in English which, although relatively small in number, cover a broad and diverse number of perspectives.
Clarke (1999) provides the most accessible overview of history, beliefs and issues and offers a good summation of Turkish views and also benefits from her scholarly interest in dede lineage and expressive culture. Shankland (2003a; 1999) brings an anthropological perspective and is particularly good on details of ritual in the
Anatolian context. Until Shankland‘s work there has been a heavy reliance on work of Birge (1994) originally published in the late 1930s which, although still extremely valuable in its rich detail, is derived from the Bektaşi tradition of European Turkey and the Balkans. The collections of essays edited by Olsson (1998), White and
Jongerden (2003) and Markussen (2005a) provide a broad coverage of issues particularly in respect to the expression of Alevi identity including, in White and
Jongerden, Kurdish Alevi identity. Sökefeld (2008) focuses on the significant phenomenon of the influence of Alevis in ‗transnational space‘, specifically in
Germany and their relationship to movements asserting Alevi identity. The small publication by Yaman and Erdemir (2006) is particularly valuable as a work written
18 by Alevis associated with one of the most prominent Alevi organisations in Turkey.
Şener‘s (2009) book, although poorly translated, provides an additional Alevi perspective from a prominent writer and commentator on Alevi issues.
I will focus this survey of relevant literature, then, on those areas that relate to the central concerns of this study, namely:
1. Pir Sultan Abdal – particularly as encountered as an identity encoded in the text of publications presenting his putative life and art; 2. The deyiş – a traditional lyric form as the primary mode of Alevi expression; 3. The mahlas – the (self) naming convention employed in the lyric songs as the key textual integer; and, 4. Alevi expressive culture – specifically Alevi music (song) as the means of interpretation.
1.6.1 Pir Sultan Abdal
A substantial literature in respect to Pir Sultan Abdal has appeared since the second decade of the twentieth century and the founding of the Turkish Republic. The major part of this consists of collections of lyric texts with additional material concerning his putative and legendary life and the form and content of the lyric poems attributed to him. The significant early works include the short essay by Köprülü published under the name Mehmed Fuad in Ottoman script in the Hayat Mecmuası in 1928 and republished in a Latin script translation in Ulucay (1997) and particularly the 1929 monograph by Sadettin Nüzhet (Ergun 1929) which is the first substantial work, including 105 lyrics, devoted to Pir Sultan Abdal10. These works establish at the outset the focus of much of the literature to follow including the matter of mahlas
10 Citation of the works by Mehmed Fuad and Sadettin Nühzet generally use the surnames they later adopted, Köprülü and Ergun, though these do not appear on the original publications.
19 attribution being confused, particularly with Hatayi (Shah Ismail); his identity as a kızılbaş Alevi; and an interest in his historical identity and that of his nemesis Hızır
Paşa. Also particularly useful is Besim Atalay‘s work Bektaşilik ve edebiyatı published originally in Ottoman script in 1340 in the Ottoman calendar (1924 CE)
(Atalay 1340 (1924)) which includes a number of Pir Sultan Abdal deyiş and many others. This work was subsequently published in a Latin script translation by V. Atila
(Atalay 1991). Access to both these edition has allowed me to check transcription issues and note the conventions of presenting the mahlas in Ottoman script. Both
Köprülü and Ergun acknowledge an earlier publication by Derviş Ruhullah titled
Bektaşi nefesleri (published in the same Ottoman calendar year as Köprülü‘s article) that included a small number of Pir Sultan lyrics, however I have not been able to consult a copy of this work.
Arguably the most significant work to date and the one on which I have relied most heavily is that of Gölpınarlı and Boratav (1943; 1991). This publication is particularly interesting and useful as it combined the work and approaches of two major scholars, one the literary historian Gölpınarlı and the other the pioneering
Turkish folklorist Boratav11. Gölpınarlı provides considerable historical and literary context, particularly in respect to mystical traditions, and knowledge of manuscript sources, cönk and mecmua. Notable is the inclusion of three of the earliest lyrics recorded as being attributed to Pir Sultan from an early seventeenth century manuscript copy of the Menâkıbu‟l-esrar behcetü‟l-ahrâr (a book of Alevi principles and conduct attributed to Bisatî, originally compiled in the late sixteenth century) though Gölpınarlı unfortunately never published this manuscript itself and he only
11 On the important place of Boratav in the history of the study of Turkish folklore see Öztürkmen (2005; 1992) and Birkalen (2004).
20 gives sketchy details about its provenance. In this respect Ahmet Taşğın‘s edition of the Menâkıb of Bisatî is useful as it is based on a different manuscript than that in the possession of Gölpınarlı and includes different lyrics attributed to Pir Sultan.
Taşğın‘s edition also includes a facsimile of the original manuscript although this is poorly reproduced in the published work. The 1943 publication by Gölpınarlı and
Boratav considerably expanded the information available particularly because of the contribution of Boratav who undertook field work in the Sivas region, including Pir
Sultan Abdal‘s village of Banaz, collecting legends and deyiş, thus introducing the first folkloric research in respect to Pir Sultan. I have relied on Gölpınarlı and
Boratav‘s work because it is the earliest publication that brings together lyrics from manuscript, publication and folklore sources and it is also one of the few collections to identify the source of the lyrics, if only in very modest detail. The expanded edition of their book, published in 1991, includes additional texts that had appeared in other publications since the 1943 edition.
Cahit Öztelli‘s (1971) work significantly expanded the collection of texts available and also included twenty-five notated musical examples12. Many of these additional texts (and the music) were from Vahid Lütfti Salcı (Vahid Dede) a renowned Bektaşi and musician from the European territory of Turkey13. Öztelli produced many collections of folk lyrics of which, besides his work on Pir Sultan Abdal, most notable and useful are Bektaşi gülleri (Öztelli 1971), Uyan Padişahım (1976),
Evlerinin önü (Öztelli 2002) and, most importantly, Pir Sultan‟ın dostları (Öztelli
1996) one of the few substantial works concerning the life and work of Pir Sultan‘s disciple (murid) Kul Himmet.
12 It should be noted that Ergun (1929) included six notated examples in his collection. 13 See Yaprak (2003) for detail about the life and work of Vahid Dede.
21
The work of the Sivas folklore scholar İbrahim Aslanoğlu‘s looms large in this thesis owing to the influence his work in seeking to identify and organise the historical identities of the major Alevi poets – Hatayi, Pir Sultan Abdal and Kul Himmet. Most significant is his publication Pir Sultan Abdallar (Aslanoğlu 19κ4) in which he proposes six separate identities, ranging over a number of centuries, for the poets to which the lyrics of Pir Sultan are attributed. These poets are largely, though not soley, identified and organised on the basis of their mahlas: Pir Sultan, Pir Sultan
Abdal, Pir Sultan‘ım Haydar, Pir Sultan Abdal (Halil İbrahim), Abdal Pir Sultan and
Pir Sultan Abdal (a poet writing in the weighted aruz metre rather than syllabic, hece, metre). Similarly his work distinguishing the identities of Kul Himmet and Kul
Himmet Üstadım has been influential and widely adopted. The late literary historian and scholar Asım Bezirci (1994) was a particularly strong advocate of Aslanoğlu‘s idea of the multiple Pir Sultan Abdals and the assertion that the original (asıl) identity was one using the mahlas Pir Sultan, not Pir Sultan Abdal. Bezirci in fact proposes eight Pir Sultan Abdallar including four using the mahlas Pir Sultan Abdal and two using the mahlas Pir Sultan. I have found Bezirci‘s work, however, most useful in his discussion and analysis of the form of the lyrics, as is the work of
Haydar Kaya (1999).
While the work of Aslanoğlu and Bezirci has sought to uncover identities or distinguish identifiable voices among the body of lyrics attributed Pir Sultan Abdal other scholars assert the primary importance of the transmission process of the oral tradition and the concept of a ‗Pir Sultan Abdal tradition‘ (Pir Sultan Abdal geleneği), most notable being the prominent folkorist İlhan Başgöz in his essay
22 included in the collection by Sabahattin Eyüboğlu ([n.d.]) and reprinted within a collection of substantial essays by Irene Melikoff, Nejat Birdoğan, Esat Korkmaz and others published by the Pir Sultan Abdal Kültür Derneği (Anadolu Aleviliği ve Pir
Sultan Abdal 1998).
The most dedicated Pir Sultan Abdal scholar in recent times is Ali Haydar Avcı who has produced a number of substantial works (Avcı 2003; Avcı 2004), particularly in respect to issues of identity, culminating in his monumental publication of 878 pages titled Osmanlı gizi tahrihinde Pir Sultan Abdal ve bütün deyişleri (Pir Sultan Abdal in the hidden history of the Ottomans and his complete deyiş) (Avcı 2006) that follows the format of introductory material concerned with the life and work of Pir
Sultan Abdal followed by the most substantial collection of lyrics to date, some 410 texts. Avcı‘s work is the most thorough in examining Pir Sultan in the historical context as well as issues to do with identity. Mention should also be made of the small collection published by the literary scholar Memet Fuat (Fuat 1977, 1999). The modest dimensions of the collection belie its size by offering a fine representative collection of deyiş and includes a particularly useful gloss accompanying the lyric texts. The works of Tahir Kutsi Makal (1977; 1999) have also been very useful since they incorporate information derived from a visit to Banaz in the late 1970s in which his principal informant was the late Banaz aşık Nuri Kılıç (who used the mahlas
Deryanî)14.
14 David Grabias‘s film Asiklar: those who are in love includes rare video footage of Aşık Nuri (Grabias 1996) and the associated soundtrack CD includes three recordings of Nuri singing Pir Sultan Abdal deyiş (Various 1999). When I visited Banaz in 2002 Nuri‘s brother Salih allowed me to copy a recording of Aşık Nuri made in the village, probably shortly before his death. I was assisted in my visit to Banaz by ‗Kızılbaş‘ Mehmet Aslan, a Banazlı now living of Australia, who was a contemporary and school friend of Nuri Kılıç.
23 Despite the considerable literature surrounding Pir Sultan Abdal in Turkish, even allowing for the repetitive nature of a sizeable amount of it, there has been little scholarly interest in English. Indeed there has been little interest in Turkish folk literature generally. Başgöz who has written over a long period in both Turkish and
English has produced the most substantial literature in English regarding Turkish folk culture, however his focus is primarily the minstrel ‗romance‘ or cantefable tradition, hikaye, of eastern Turkey (Kars and Erzurum)15. Other scholars such as
Eberhard (1955), Moyle (1990) and Erdener (1995) have followed a similar interest.
Literary historian and critic Talat Halman has edited useful collections of essays, including his own, in regard to the major Turkish mystical folk poet Yunus Emre
(Halman 1972, 1981) and other collections of works on Yunus Emre have also appeared in English the most scholarly being the translations of Grace Martin Smith
(1993) providing literary, linguistic and historical background material. A small volume of English translations of lyrics by the seventeenth century aşık Karacaoğlan appeared as part of Indiana University‘s Turkish Studies series (Karabaş and Yarnall
1996) and Jennifer Ferraro in collaboration with the Turkish-American musician
Latif Bolat produced another small but welcome collection of translations of Alevi-
Bektaşi lyrics including two Pir Sultan Abdal lyrics (Ferraro and Bolat 2007).
At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century no collection of Pir Sultan
Abdal deyiş has appeared in English translation and, indeed, the first substantial collection to be published anywhere in translation is that by Jean-Louis Mattei of 100 lyrics translated into French (Mattei 2010).
15 A collection of Başgöz‘s articles published over five decades was edited by Kemal Silay (1998) and his most recent work is a monograph on the hikâye folk romance tradition (Başgöz 200κ).
24 1.6.2 Deyiş
There is scant literature on the deyiş as a lyric or musical form. This is due in part to the issue of terminology and definition. While it is generally understood what the deyiş is – a type of lyric song associated with the folk poets (aşık-s) and most commonly understood has having mystical or ‗Alevi‘ themes – sufficient attention has not been given to the way the deyiş is perceived, conceptualised or used. The
Alevi-Bektaşi nefes, which in certain respects – though not all – can be considered synonymous with the deyiş does broaden the scope of the literature. Many works touch on or define the deyiş particularly as a lyric form, but the only substantial work that considers the deyiş from both its textual and musical perspectives is that of
Duygulu (1997). Duygulu identifies the deyiş as a distinct genre but one that must be thought of in broad terms especially in respect to subject matter. The work of scholars focusing more broadly on other aspects of Alevi expressive culture have established the distinction of the deyiş as a thematic and functional genre and the various writings of Markoff, Birdoğan, Clarke and Onatça are particularly useful in this respect.
1.6.3 Mahlas
While the literature gives prominence to the collecting and organising of Alevi (deyiş or nefes) texts as well as their thematic concerns, as in the case of Pir Sultan Abdal, the principle upon which such work is based and its structural elements has received little attention. The mahlas, specifically, has not been systematically studied to any significant degree in respect to its use in the Turkish folk tradition which is somewhat remarkable given its ubiquity in the work of the Turkish folk poets (halk
25 şaiirleri, saz şaiirleri or aşıklar). The most cited study is the relatively brief article by Şükrü Elçin (1997a). Doğan Kaya also provides a useful study, particular in respect to the forms of the mahlas based on his researches of the mahlas taking tradition in the Sivas region. Works devoted to particular aşık-s or anthology collections in some cases provide information in the form of anecdotes and legends about how mahlas have been adopted or assigned16. What interest there is in the literature is largely concerned with stories of how a mahlas was taken or issues of lyric attribution where a lyric may be attributed to one poet‘s mahlas in one source and to another in another source. Even in the influential work of İbrahim Aslanoğlu in regards to identifying multiple Pir Sultans, where the mahlas is implicitly the central issue, there is no analysis of the function of the mahlas in the deyiş, rather the concern is that of establishing and categorising specific identities by associating the form of the mahlas with other textual referents.
What interest there has been in the mahlas has centred on the Ottoman poetic tradition. The only published monographs on the mahlas in Turkish, the works by
Yıldırım (2006), Çalık (1999) and Semih (1993) are largely constituted of lists of mahlaslar although Yıldırım certainly tries to more broadly contextualise but relies on Elçin in respect to the mahlas in folk tradition. Despite the fact that much of the literature in respect to Turkish folk literature is organised around the attribution provided by the mahlas, the literature reveals little systematic interest in how the mahlas functions, how it means or how it is used beyond the identification of issues of dubious or confused attribution.
16 See for example Atılgan (1992) and Aslanoğlu (1985).
26 Outside the Turkish tradition there is only slightly more interest in related self- naming conventions and these focus on classical and high traditions. Meisami (1990;
2003) and particularly Losensky (1998a; 1998b) consider the function of the mahlas in the Persian tradition and Andrews (1985) touches on its function respect to the
Ottoman divan literature. Arberry‘s (1946) paper discussing the poetry of the Persian
Hafiz is significant in conceptualising the mahlas as a metaphorical ‗clasp‘ closing a polythematic poem. The works of Rosenberg (2004) who discusses the role of signature bearing terminal part stanzas, the envoi, in Medieval French trouvère song and Kimmelman (1999) who sees a nascent modern literary identity in the self identification of troubadours such as Marcabru, provide useful perspectives from another tradition in the process of transition from an oral to written (textual) culture.
While my study does not venture into the comparative study of self-naming conventions and authorial auto-citation the contrasting perspectives from these (high) traditions has helped to inform my approach and settle on my framing of the function of the mahlas as less of a rhetorical literary device than a traditional textual integer.
1.6.4 Alevi music
Given the extensive literature concerning Alevilik that has emerged since the 1980s and the generally accepted and stated significance of aşık-s, the centrality of ritual and the oral transmission of Alevi culture through song forms, it is perhaps surprising that Alevi music, so defined, has received relatively little attention. Gloria
Clarke writing in the late 1990s notes that ―one cannot say that Alevi or even Turkish is a well-studied sound‖ (Clarke 1999, 140). There is, as Clarke also observes, no shortage of material since there has been significant work undertaken in collecting and preserving the music. In part the paucity of interest may be due to the difficulties
27 in describing Alevi music as a distinct genre (Clarke 1999, 144). It is notable that the semah, as a genre, has received the most interest, due to its specific ritual function, its broader expressive qualities including dance, and distinct musical characteristics such as rhythmic changes. A number of substantial works on semah have been published which include some consideration of musical aspects including notated examples and indications of rhythm and tempo, form, texts sung as well as the context of performance (Salcı 1941; Erseven 2001; Bozkurt 1995; Dinçal 199ι;
Markoff 1994a). A major work based on a masters degree study by a member of the
Ankara Devlet Türk Halk Müziği Korusu (Ankara State Turkish Folk Music Choir) analysing the musical aspects of fourteen regional examples of the kırklar semahı appeared in publication in 2007 (Onatça 2007). Other musical forms associated with
Alevi ritual practice, most notably the central and fundamental expression of Alevi belief the duaz-ı imam, have not received the interest given to the semah; and Ahmet
Yürür‘s analysis of the miraçlama from structural and gnostic perspectives is a rare study demonstrating how the significance of structural elements in Alevi music point to evidence of intrinsic values of the cultural community (Yürür 1989).
Interest in describing musical characteristics of Alevi music date back to the 1930s with the work of Vahid Lütfü Salcı (Vahid Dede) coalescing in his two short monographs published in the early 1940s (Salcı 1940, 1941). Salcı‘s work sparked the interest of the French scholar Eugene Borrel who published two substantial articles on Alevi music in French during this period (Borrel 1934, 1947). Salcı highlights the ‗secret‘ nature of Alevi music (and also its susceptability to corrupting effects from outside Western influences in the cities) which has largely to do with the nature of the texts; and while the music is contigous with ‗open‘ folk music he
28 suggests there are identifiable differences in musical style and manner of playing
(Salcı 1940). Later writers specifically referring to Alevi music have generally characterised it based on the textual content as demonstrating two sides, one constituted of religious elements the other of social, civil or other subjects not specifically releated to ritual practice (Odabaş 2001; Birdoğan 1995; Zelyut 199κ).
More substantial is the work of Duygulu noted above who provides a broader perspective on Alevi music including consideration of musical structure in respect to the deyiş more generally (Duygulu 1997).
Given the wider interest in issues of Alevi identity it is perhaps not surprising that ethnomusicological interest has also concentrated on music in respect to the expression of Alevi identity and society, although in the case of researchers like
Markoff (1986a; 2002b; 1986b) and Clarke (1999; 2001) this also includes an interest in the characteristics of musical sound, organology and expressive culture; while Poyraz‘s (2007) monograph looks at political and economic aspects of Alevi music culture. A principal informant for Poyraz‘s work is the prominent virtuoso
Alevi musician Arif Sağ and two books of interviews with Sağ (1993; 2004) also provide some of the most useful insights into the expression of Alevi music.
Markoff, herself a former bağlama student of Sağ, remains the most prominent scholar of Alevi expressive culture writing in English and her work is particularly resonant in my study, not the least because she conducted her original fieldwork and research on the peformance practice of Turkish bağlama specialists in the early
1980s, a period of significant emerging public expression of Alevi music. While
Markoff‘s thesis considered the specialist bağlama performer more broadly in
29 Turkish musical culture, the timing of her research and the fact that many of her informants were among the most prominent and renowned Alevi musicians of the late twentieth century make her scholarly contributions in respect to Alevi music particularly valuable.
30
2. ENCOUNTERS: PIR SULTAN ABDAL, KUL HİMMET AND THE MAHLAS PERSONA IN HISTORY, LEGEND AND TEXT
2.1 Introduction
In this chapter I propose an encounter with two of the pre-eminent figures of Alevi oral culture: Pir Sultan Abdal, variously described as poet, minstrel, bard, rebel, saint and martyr; and Kul Himmet, Pir Sultan‘s mürid (disciple) and the youngest of the seven great bards of Alevi tradition. My intention in establishing this encounter is to highlight the issue at the centre of my investigation: how the persona of the aşık in the Alevi tradition transmits meaning through presence of persona in the Alevi lyric song, the deyiş. Pir Sultan Abdal is arguably the most significant figure in Alevi oral tradition and as such presents an example that is in some respects unique. However, it is my contention that the example of Pir Sultan Abdal, in as much as it is extraordinary, reveals and highlights inherent processes, rather than obscures them, since the possibilities of meaning and interpretation of the tradition – the received texts and the legendary persona – are more fully developed, or at least expanded, in the case of his persona and the body of lyrics attributed to him.
The encounter I propose is in some respects fully formed as it is based on nearly eighty years of folkloric and literary research interest and publication in respect to Pir
Sultan Abdal in Turkey. Moreover, this body of research and publication itself represents much turning over of the same ground with a focus on (possibly necessarily) limited questions in respect to a putative historical identity. For this reason I characterise this encounter, phenomenologically, as being a ‗pre-
31 understanding‘ since it does not extend to the explication of the oral lyric form or interpretation of examples of the expressive culture which will be the focus of subsequent chapters. As Ricoeur states: ―the most fundamental condition of the hermeneutical circle lies in the structure of pre-understanding which relates all explication to the understanding which precedes and supports it‖ (Ricoeur 1998,
108). In respect to Pir Sultan Abdal, as the exemplar of the Alevi lyric tradition, pre- understanding is necessarily directed towards an analysis of identity imagined through the collection and active construction of a ‗divan‘ or authored body of texts that has engaged scholars and anthologists since the 1920s. The textual weight of the
Alevi lyric, most particularly the body of work attributed to Pir Sultan Abdal, understandably and not inappropriately compels towards a ―mediation by the text‖ by
―expression fixed in writing‖ the feature of which, Ricoeur suggests, ―is that the meaning contained therein is rendered autonomous with respect to the intention of the author‖ (Ricoeur 1998, 108). One of the possibilities of this mediation by the text is the potential reconstruction of a body of lyrics based on the internal and assumed attribution of authorship. This central purpose and theme of the many works on Pir Sultan Abdal and what I will refer to as the ‗textualisation‘ of Pir Sultan Abdal is the point of encounter from which I determine the direction of this study through subsequent explications and interpretations.
Perhaps the most evident result of the textualisation of Pir Sultan Abdal is the determined, even laborious, attempts to establish or situate a historical identity for the author of the lyrics. It is not my intention in this chapter to engage definitively in the debates over the details of a proposed historical identity, by which I mean that I do not intend to analyse the available research with the purpose of establishing a
32 definitive position on the propositions in respect to the historical identity of Pir
Sultan Abdal. While I will cover this territory – and it is an area that anyone interested in Pir Sultan Abdal will find themselves drawn into, engaging with, and no doubt forming opinions about – my purpose here is to establish and describe the necessarily limited scope of this research.
This chapter establishes a context against which the subsequent parts of my thesis can be read: these being my explications of the deyiş form and the mahlas convention; and my descriptions and analysis of aspects of popular Alevi expressive culture. Thus, I aim to demonstrate that even the textualisation – that is, the process of committing a canon of texts to an authorial identity – and study of Pir Sultan
Abdal points us toward the fundamental orality of the subject and the central place of the Alevi lyric form, the deyiş, and its signifying element the mahlas self-naming convention. I also aim to demonstrate that the overt personalisation of the lyric texts in fact points to a social and communal function, rather than the objective of authorial individualism.
This chapter begins with a discussion of aspects of Alevilik (Alevi cultural identity) to establish a background to the cultural context from which Pir Sultan Abdal and the deyiş lyrics emerge. It is my purpose here to highlight relevant aspects of foundational beliefs, authority and transmission.
2.2 Alevilik (Alevi-ism)
In order to provide an essential cultural background to the introduction of Pir Sultan
Abdal it in necessary to describe the relevant context of Alevilik. It is not my
33 objective to engage deeply in the issue of Alevi identity, nor its historiography.
However, as a contribution to the study of Alevis examining the place of personal identity in the principal artistic and cultural expressive form of Alevi society, the deyiş, a position as to what is understood by Alevilik is clearly important. In part this may be semantic, though it is certainly not merely a semantic issue. My purpose is to highlight those aspects of Alevilik that significantly bear upon my thesis, not to provide a thorough summation of Alevi beliefs, ritual and culture that constitute
Alevilik.
The literature on Alevilik in Turkish has, since the mid-1980s, amounted to a vast documentation of primary sources, commentary and scholarly analysis. As has been noted earlier, much of the writing on Alevilik in Turkish can be considered a primary source because much of the assertion and working through of Alevi identity in the public space has taken place through the publication of books, articles, interviews and other media documentation. The cultural story and historiography of Alevis and
Alevilik is a complex one emanating from and sustained in oral tradition and rural communities on the one hand but engaged with and transformed through the migration to urban life and the social and political consequences and influences of such change. To add to this inherent complexity is the long-standing secrecy about
Alevi culture and the suspicion with which Alevis have historically been considered by the majority orthodox Sunni Turks; and the relationship in respect to fundamental beliefs and shared cultural artefacts (specifically the traditional lyric tradition) with the urban Bektaşi tarikat. The dialectic of the processes of establishing, negotiating and asserting Alevi identity (Alevilik) has been supported by and generated by the prolific publications by Alevis and about Alevis from the mid-1980s onwards and for
34 this reason the considerable literature produced remains a primary source for scholarship.
The designation Alevi (and, it follows, Alevilik) must be understood, in its current meaning, to be a historically constructed term. As Shankland notes, as a ―blanket term … to refer to the heterodox groups of Anatolia as a whole‖ the term Alevi is recent, perhaps no more than a century old (Shankland 2003a, 19)17. Livni also stresses the historical construction of the use of the term and that the study of
Alevilik ―should be connected to the study of Turkish history, because Alevi identity is a product of the transition from Ottoman Empire to Turkish Republic‖ (Livni
2002, 15). As Livni notes, historically the heterodox communities of Anatolia may be identified by terms such as kızılbaş, fesatçı (plotter, intriguer) or rafızı (heretic)
(Livni 2002, 10). The term Alevi is less common and rarely found in the historical documentation. In the record of the mühimme defteri18 those who might now be understood as Anatolian or Türkmen Alevi were referred to by a multitude of characterisations which Şener lists as: rafızı, kızılbaş, ışık taifesi (dervish crew), seyitler, zındıklar (misbelievers), mülhitler (transgressors, heretics), kafirler
(infidels), ehli-sünnet el cematten olmayanlar (those who are not Sunni Muslims),
şarap içenler (wine drinkers), halife (followers), müfsit (mischief maker), cuma namazına gitmeyenler (those who do not go to Friday prayer), ehli sûnnete haraket edenler (those acting against Sunni Muslims), eşkiyalar (bandits, brigands), hırsızlar
(robbers) et al. (Şener 2002, 12). In other words, those who are now understood as
17 Shankland cites Irene Mélikoff as supporting this view. In referring to the term used for this general identification being no more than a century old he places its adoption to the early part of the twentieth century. See also Melikoff (1993, 26) and Clarke (1999, 10, 14). 18 Ottoman official records of ‗significant issues‘ dating from the sixteenth century.
35 Alevi or proto-Alevi, during the formative sixteenth century, may be understood as representing a broad category of antinomian and anti-state activities.
This is not to question nor diminish the reality of Alevi identity – Livni while critical of the projection backwards of an Alevi identity agrees there is ―an Alevi society and religion in modern Turkey‖ (Livni 2002, 5) – but rather to understand that the expression of ‗Alevi‘ identity represents a coalescing of heterodox Anatolian communal identity as a public expression of shared essential defining characteristics, particularly in respect to the perception and acceptance of opposition to the state and religious orthodoxy and the consequent subjection to suppression and oppression.
Yaman and Erdemir see the kızılbaş as the ancestors of Alevis and Bektaşi-s and that the name kızılbaş was abandoned for Alevi to overcome the pejorative meaning it gained in the Ottoman era. They also see little essential difference between Alevis and Bektaşi-s, the main difference being in the social organisation – Alevis as migratory or semi-migratory and Bektaşi-s as urban – and while there are ―some formal differences in some religious rites and practices‖ they are ―in unity … in regards to their faith and moral principles and literature‖ (Yaman and Erdemir 2006,
6).
The use of the term Alevi is of historical interest and a matter of importance to the expression of identity by contemporary Alevis. İsmail Kaygusuz argues passionately in defence of the historical use of the name Alevi before the nineteenth century citing as one of his principal pieces of evidence a lyric attributed to Pir Sultan Abdal
(Kaygusuz 1995, 101)19.
19 Clarke summarises Kaygusuz‘s dispute with the Irene Melikoff over the term Alevi. As Clarke points out, the significant question behind such dispute, and why this questions require further
36
Pir Sultan çağırır Hint‟te Yemen‟de Dolaştırsam seni Sahib – zamanda İradet getirdim ikrar imanda Hüseynî‟yim, Alevi‟yim ne dersin (Öztelli 1971, 189)
Pir Sultan crys out in India in Yemen If I cause you to wander Mehdi master of time I brought the command of the pledge in belief I am Husayn, I am Alevi, say what you will 20
This text is the mahlas verse of a duaz-ı imam (invocation in praise of the Twelve
Imams of Shi‘a tradition) and offers no evidence of dating this to the sixteenth century, or even attributing it to Pir Sultan with any certainty, although the duaz-ı imam is a foundational Alevi lyric form21. The text does not appear in the earliest collections of Atalay (1991), Ergun (1929) and Gölpınarlı and Boratav (1943). A lyric resembling this and attributed to Kul Himmet has a slightly different refrain:
Hüseyniyiz mevaliyiz, ne dersin (We are Hüseyin we are the Master, say what you will) (Öztelli 1996, 119-120). All of which proves little except that the lyric in this form being attributed to two of the major poets of the sixteenth century clearly accommodates a degree of interpretation with only one version expressing the designation Alevi explicitly. More convincing of at least the existence of the term in this early period is another lyric of Kul Himmet that Gölpınarlı records from a manuscript in his possession of the Menâkıbu‟l-esrâr behcetü‟l-ahrâr (that is the research, is whether the term Alevi, as Melikoff asserts, has been historically used only for those who are actually descendents of Ali, or whether it also encompasses the supporters of Ali (Clarke 1999, 14- 15). The common, functional and widespread use and acceptance of the designation Alevi in the early twenty-first century for the heterodox community in Turkey would seem to leave dispute over the intrinsic meaning of the term as a largely matter of academic interest however. 20 The full text and translation is included in the Translations chapter, section 5.5.19. 21 The duaz-ı imam will be discussed in more detail in the Experiences chapter below.
37 büyük buyruk, the ‗great‘ book of beliefs and ritual) of Bisâti (Gölpınarlı 1963, 32-
33):
Cümle bir mürşide demişler belî Tesbihleri Allah Muhammed Alî Meşrebi Huseynî ismi Alevî Muhammed Alî‟ye çıkar yolları
Altogether they say yes to the guide, Their prayer beads [repeat] Allah, Muhammad, Ali, Their affiliation is Hüseyni, their name is Alevi, Their way leads to Muhammad Ali (Translation from Dressler (2007, 93)).
As Dressler notes, such examples are at best rare and hardly signify anything other than veneration of Ali and claims of Alid pedigree (Dressler 2007, 93).
The usage and semantics of the term are rather a reflection of the historical and social processes. The politicisation of the Alevis (or proto-Alevis) in the sixteenth century emphasised the designation kızılbaş through association with the Safavid cause
(Clarke 1999, 15). The designation of Alevi, whatever its historical currency, is best understood in contemporary terms as encompassing the fully charged gamut of social, political, historical, organisational, belief and ritual concepts, expressions and processes. In short, the very lives and identities of those who identify as Alevi in all their complexity.
This is in an important respect a broadening and generalising process; as Yaman and
Erdemir state: ―historical differences between Alevi and Bektaşi have started to lose
38 their meaning and the name ‗Alevi‘ has been started (sic) to be used more commonly‖ (Yaman and Erdemir 2006, 6). In settling on a designation that is inclusive of those groups with an essential commonality of belief, principles and literature the interpretive potential is enriched since broader experiences are brought into play around the foundational beliefs and perceptions of history.
In broadening the perception of what Alevilik can be or how it can be interpreted, there is also an impetus towards definition by distinction – it is perhaps easier to conceptualise Alevilik by what it is not. So the expression of Alevi identity can encompass assertions of an essentially Islamic identity, a heterodox or syncretistic belief system or a philosophical belief system that proposes the centrality of the ideal human. Yet all positions reject identification with orthodox, Sunni Islam22. Şener for example asserts the place of Alevilik in Islamic tradition, though distinct from Sunni
Islam, defining it as ―an original interpretation of Islam that defends the uniqueness of God, being Prophet of Muhammad and being holy of Caliph Ali. It is very different from Sunni‘s interpretations‖ (Şener 2009, 15). As Shindeldecker summaries in his short publication on Alevis produced for the Şahkulu Sultan
Külliyesi Vakfı23, it is impossible to give a brief and simple definition of Alevilik or indeed any other faith. In respect to Alevis, as for other faiths, there are ―a variety of interpretations and a spectrum of attitudes: traditionalist, fundamentalist, conservative, nominal and liberal‖ (Shindeldecker 1998, 59). Alevis live and engage in the modern urban and transnational world and can no longer been seen as merely a rural culture. Alevilik is therefore necessarily interpreted within the complexity and
22 Clarke‘s discussion of the definition of ‗Alevi‘ and ‗Alevism‘, surveying the literature of the 19κ0s and 1990s highlights the range of categorisations by which Alevi identity can be understood (Clarke 1999, 9-36). 23 An Alevi dergah complex and foundation in Istanbul.
39 plurality of modern circumstance and life if it is to provide a relevant structure for contemporary Alevis. The inherent esoteric characteristic of Alevilik provides for the capacity for wide interpretation but to remain within the ambit of what is accepted as
Alevilik this necessarily depends on an engagement with the foundational and fundamental beliefs, symbols and authority structures.
2.2.1 Foundational beliefs
As Dressler (2007, 106) states in regards to beliefs and practices:
The religious worldview of Alevism is based on a b ţini interpretation of Islam stressing the inner meaning of religion … Alevīs play down both the literal meaning of the Qur‘ n as well as the practical religious duties of mainstream Islam.
Or, as Yaman and Erdemir (2006, 43) write:
Alevi faith depends on the beliefs, institutions, and practices that are shaped around the love of God-Muhammad-Ali (Hak-Muhammad-Ali). This understanding of faith and worship has its own distinctive aspects. The basis of this understanding depends on its acceptance of the essence as the foundation, rather than the form, and on its opposition to formalism. Although there are formal practices and worship in Alevism, what is essential is not the form and apparent meanings (zâhir, exoteric), but the essence and hidden meanings (bâtın, esoteric).
The bases of faith and ritual, worship and practice are directed towards this ‗essence‘ or esoteric experiences that ultimately ―give shape to the ideal person‖, the insan-ı
40 kâmil, the mature human being which evokes relative concepts ―to die before death‘ and ―to be God with God‖ (Yaman and Erdemir 2006, 44).
While Shi‘a motifs abound and permeate the textual tradition, religious language, imagery and ritual these, as Dressler notes, reflect marginalised popular Shi‘a narrative not orthodox Shi‘a theology and include belief in the divinity of the Imam
Ali. This dominance of Shi‘a mythology is largely attributed to the Safavid influence during the formative sixteenth century and the subsequent buyruk texts (Dressler
2007, 109)24. Alongside the apotheosis of Ali, the foundational narrative for Alevis emerges from the martyrdom of the Imam Husayn (Turkish: Hüseyin) at Kerbela
(Karbala) in 6κ0 CE and establishes the ―chain of suffering … emotively commemorated‖ (Dressler 2007, 109) in the ritual ceremony the cem expressed in form through the performance of the mersiye or Kerbela ağıt as well as the invocations of Twelve Imams in the duaz-ı imam.
Clarke (1999, 11) quoting and translating Dierl (1991, 34) summarises four foundational beliefs:
1. Theory that all existence comes from God (sıdır teorisi) 2. Perfect human theory (kâmil insan teorisi) 3. Love for Ali (Ali aşkı) 4. Rejection of Muslim religious law (shariat) and the use of ancient Turkish social values in its place.
24 A number of the marginalised, exaggerator, or religiously extreme sects covered by the term ghulat located in Iran, Syria and Turkey (including the kızılbaş-Alevi) are examined by Moosa who defines the cornerstone of their religious system as the apotheosis of Ali (Moosa 1988).
41 The foundational beliefs point in the direction of those aspects that bear most significantly on the expressive and interpretive potential inherent in Alevilik including one‘s position in relation to the path to profound moral maturity.
Specifically the focus on the perfection of the human through esoteric exploration inspires a commitment to a moral and exemplary life, a position in respect not only to God but to community and, indeed, the world more generally. This personal responsibility is summarised in the Alevi edep (rule): eline, diline, beline sahip ol (be the master of your hand, tongue and loin). In addition, the concept of the perfect human relates also to the love for Ali and the suffering of Husayn in which is founded the roots of lineage; and lineage establishes authority and the forces of communal inclusiveness and cohesion. To this is added the relegation of form to values. Ritual is important in maintaining the foundation of belief but is not the end in itself. Fundamental values demonstrated through lines of authority that strive for the purity of the person structured around ritual but rejecting of dogma – as specifically written tenets – provides a structured, focused and sustaining culture that also permits, and perhaps even requires, the impetus of interpretation and re-creation because of its basis in, and adherence to, orality. The rich tradition of Alevi lyric production from the sixteenth century until the present, which is altogether re- affirming, re-iterative and re-inventive is a demonstration of this.
2.2.2 Authority: ocakzade and dedelik
Traditional Alevi communities are connected and formed around hereditary, charismatic and hierarchical lineage and authority. In village society this can be complex and may determine relationships between villages with a dede having talip- s (followers) in a number of local villages (Shankland 2003b, 40). The dede obtains
42 authority from lineage that can be traced back to the household and descendents of the Prophet – the ehlibeyt25 – that is Muhammad, Ali, Fatima, Hasan and Husayn and the imams descended of Imam Ali together constituting the Twelve Imams of Shi‘a tradition. For Alevis those who follow the ehlibeyt are of the true path (yol) and so love of the ehlibeyt ―constitutes the base of Alevism‖ (Yaman and Erdemir 2006,
46). As Clarke notes, while some ocak26 families even produce documents to prove the lineage and the historicity of such claims are certainly doubted by scholars, it is the belief in such truths that shapes behaviour (Clarke 1999, 89).
The hierarchical structure and relationship of ocak-s, dede-s and their followers can be complicated and degrees of reputation and authority at variance (Dressler 2007,
114) a factor that may in fact serve to enhance the mysterious authority of the dede lineage. Yaman and Erdemir (2006, 52-53) classify the Alevi religious leadership in four categories:
1. Independent Ocakzade Dedes27, 2. Dedes/Babas/Vekil (representatives) affiliated with the Çelebis of Hacı Bektaş, 3. Dikme Dedes/Babas commissioned by Ocakzade Dedes28, 4. Halifebabas29, Halife and Babas affiliated with the branch of Dedebaba.
25 Ahl al-bayt. 26 Literally ‗hearth‘, referring to the dede lineage. 27 Literally the son of an ocak family; that is, a dede. The ocakzade dede-s are assumed to be descendents of the Prophet and are accordingly called seyyid (Yaman and Erdemir 2006, 52). 28 Dressler (2007, 114) explains the dikme ocaks as ―makeshift ocaks‖ arising from the historical ability of dedes to designate representatives from among talip followers who would temporarily take over some of the dede‘s functions and that this position was then bequeathed to their offspring; but these dikme ocaks lack the charismatic quality of the Alid pedigree. 29 Korkmaz (2005a, 306) defines the halifebaba as ―tarikat mürşidinin dergâhtan uzak bölgelere atadığı, halife aşamasında temsilici‖ (a representative with the rank of successor/assistant sent to regions at a distance from the dervish lodge by the spiritual leader).
43 The function of the ocak-s is to maintain social structures at the community level and to maintain an independence in the face of marginalisation (Clarke 1999, 92-93); and the conviction of lineage sustains a genealogy of inherent authority and community order and leadership in the person of the dede or his delegates.
Clarke (2001, 18) quoting Ali Yaman, summarises the essential requirements of the ocakzade dede as being:
1. Descended from the Prophet (ocakzade); 2. Able to teach, train and discipline; 3. Knowledgeable and in character able to be an example to others; 4. Able to conform to the essentials of both the written decrees (buyruklar) and established Alevi traditions.
Yaman and Erdemir (2006, 53) lists the functions of the dedes and babas as:
1. They guide the community in social and religious issues, and serve as a model for the community with their life style; 2. They enlighten and inform the community; 3. They maintain unity and solidarity; 4. They lead the social and religious ceremonies (cem, funeral, wedding etc.); 5. They maintain social justice and punish criminals through the institution of düşkün (excommunication); 6. They practice and transfer Alevi faith and customs; 7. People, who have health, moral or financial problems have recourse to them to benefit from their holy powers.
In traditional village society the ocakzade dede-s have a primary responsibility for
―the conducting of rites and thus of preserving and transmitting the culture‖ (Clarke
44 1999, 119). A responsibility of the dede is to enlighten (aydınlatma) according to the
Alevi (Bektaşi) way and as Shankland notes, this embraces a spiritual and temporal authority: ―only dede are permitted to pronounce Alevi prayers or lead Alevi ceremonies and, within the overall framework of the religious ideology, they are given authority to mediate in disputes‖ (Shankland 2003b, 40). Scholars have pointed to the weakening of the institution of spiritual leadership (dedelik) after the establishment of the Turkish Republic, not simply because of the closure of the tarikat-s in 1925 but more particularly because of the socio-economic changes especially the mass migration from rural to urban centres and developments in educational institutions and mass-media, in effect disrupting the Alevi community and the dede-talip relationship (Clarke 1999, 125-126; Yaman and Erdemir 2006,
53).
The asserted and accepted authority of lineage and charismatic warrant and persona is fundamental to understanding Alevi society and culture. Its importance in respect to the continuity and coherence of Alevilik suggests that as social circumstances change and traditional structures are weakened or changed, either Alevi society must be weakened or changed or will find new ways to sustain, assert and utilise the sub- structures of lineage, authority and charisma. However, it is in a further essential characteristic of Alevilik, the expressive culture of the poet-singer (aşık), that the potential appears for sustained nodes and pathways of authority and expressions of identity in a modern, networked, media dense and transnational society.
45 2.2.3 Transmission: Alevi aşık-s
The transmission of Alevi belief and the expression of identity has, at least until the late twentieth century, depended upon the continuity of practice of ritual and the leadership and lineage of the dede-s and the institution and products of the ‗bard‘ or
‗poet-minstrel‘, known variously as aşık, zakir or ozan. Essentially these vehicles of transmission are that of an oral culture although written documents do form a part.
Most important in this respect are the buyruk-s (literally, ‗decrees‘) or religious manuscripts ―regarded as guides of the principles of the Alevi faith‖ (Yaman and
Erdemir 2006, 58). The buyruk texts are classified generally into two sources, the
Şeyh Safî buyruğu (represented by the Menâkıbu‟l-esrar behcetü‟l-ahrâr of Bisâtî also known as the büyük buyruk) and the İmam Cafer-i Sadık buyruğu30. The earliest buyruk date back at least to the middle to late sixteenth century and the reign of the
Safavid Shah Tahmasp; and, as Dressler notes following Otter-Beaujean, the variety of buyruk manuscripts suggest they were ―not seen as unalterable sacred canons, but rather used and transmitted in line with the needs of a mainly oral culture, and subject to alterations and additions‖ (Dressler 2007, 102-103).
The buyruk contain doctrinal instructions and direction for the roles and obligations relating to rank and the rules and stages of the religious path; as well as reminders for the conduct of ritual and elaborations on the central mythologies such as the kırklar cemi (Dressler 2007, 103; Shankland 2003a, 103-104). The buyruk-s historically might have served kızılbaş-Alevi dede-s as sources for ritual and mythological knowledge (Dressler 2007, 103); that is, functioning as an aide memoire or adjunct to the primacy of the oral tradition as understood, lived and expressed by the dede-s and
30 Published editions of buyruk-s include those by Taşğın (Bisatî 2003), Atalay (1999) and Bozkurt (2006).
46 aşık-s and not as text of primacy by virtue of its written (manuscript) form. As
Shankland (2003a, 104) says of the buyruk, noting village practice:
[it] makes little attempt to tie itself down as to the specifics of daily life … is not used as a precise ritual handbook, nor does it impose a legislative code. That is, in spite of the existence of a sacred text, the great weight of the inculcation, teaching and perpetuation of Alevi religious thought lies with the local, holy patrilineages, the dedes and the oral tradition that supports them.
The aşık (sometimes âşık), meaning literally ‗lover‘ is commonly equated in English with the terms ‗minstrel‘ or ‗troubadour‘31. It is perhaps difficult to avoid the use of such terms since there is no single English language term that fully or even adequately correlates to the aşık. While ‗troubadour‘ captures something of the aşık‘s quality as a lyric poet creator and ‗seeker‘, together with the suggestion of a musician, the association of a courtly context is inappropriate. Terms such as minstrel (the jongleur or mere musician) are obviously inadequate and diminishing of the aşık‘s role32; and ‗bard‘ while better is perhaps too suggestive of the specific
Celtic tradition to be entirely helpful. In the context of Alevi culture the aşık is a poet and transmitter of the poetic tradition to which he or she belongs – in Alevi tradition the aşık is not solely the provenance of the male – who may also be expected to embody ‗enraptured‘ or transcendent qualities. Aşık-s may also perform the musical services in the ritual cem ceremony. The aşık in Alevi culture therefore strives for
31 Markoff, for example, uses terms such as ―Turkish minstrels‖ (Markoff 1986a, 56) and ―poet- minstrels‖ (Markoff 2002b, 799), Shankland has ―minstrel, folk musician or poet‖ (Shankland 2003a, 186), and Dressler following Reinhard‘s discussion on Alevi music states they ―can be compared with the Celtic bard, the French troubadour, or the German minnesinger‖ (Dressler 2003). 32 The problems of finding an adequate English description is demonstrated by the 1997 Nobel Prize Lecture, ―Contra jogulatores obliquentes‖, by Italian dramatist Dario Fo who made reference to Pir Sultan Abdal (in the context of the riots outside the Madımak hotel in Sivas in 1993) as a famous medieval Ottoman ‗jester‘. Fo used the term ‗giullare‟ meaning a jester or buffoon or, more generally, minstrel; but not poet or bard, which would be more accurate though less in keeping with the theme of his Nobel Prize speech. In the official English version of the lecture ‗jester‘ is used, thus fully misrepresenting the standing of Pir Sultan Abdal, and the aşık tradition more generally.
47 and occupies a privileged and authoritative position through the ability to create and transmit, both within and without the ritual setting, the lyric expressions of Alevi beliefs, rituals, mythologies and social views.
In discussing the Alevi aşık some distinction must also be made from the aşık-s of the minstrel tradition of eastern Turkey, a tradition that has received rather more attention in English language scholarship than that of the Alevi aşık. Köprülü writes of the aşık tradition as arising from the influence of Ahmed Yasawi (Yesevi), and being a group of ―folk poets‖ distinct from, although influenced by, the tekke (Sufi) poets, who wandered with saz (lute) in hand ―from tekke to tekke, coffee house to coffee house and city to city‖ (Köprülü 2006, 174). These ―minstrel poets‖ Köprülü says replaced the older Turkish ozan-s and bakshis and had no madrasa education and were thus better acquainted with popular taste and folk culture. These aşık-s took inspiration from Islamic tradition as well as from the legends of famous saints, old epics, national subjects and contemporary events (Köprülü 2006, 174-175).
Köprülü‘s summary is of course tinged with a Turkish nationalist purpose33 but he does identify the plausible process of the aşık emerging from an older tradition that was adaptable to social and religious influences. While the Alevi and non-Alevi aşık traditions emerge from a common ancestry, the Alevi aşık‘s role is founded in, though certainly not restricted to, the expression of esoteric (batıni) knowledge and pursuit and is particularly subject to the influence of the kızılbaş ehlibeyt topos that emerged from the late fifteenth century.
33 The work quoted, published in English translation by Leiser and Dankoff as Early mystics in Turkish literature was originally published in Turkey in 1918, a time of nascent nationalist struggle, as Türk edebiyatında ilk mutasavvıflar.
48 As distinct from the Alevi tradition, the minstrel tradition of eastern Turkey more generally centres on the performance of the hikâye, the ‗folk romance‘, a stylised performance of story-telling interspersed with song. The hikâye aşık, though commonly from a poor background, is often a semi-professional artist who seeks respect and recognition through the power of his inventiveness, sharp-wittedness and ability to entertain. The performances of these aşık-s are essentially a public performance often in a competitive context34. Some of the finest Alevi aşık-s, such as
Ali İzzet Özkan and Davut Sulari, have participated in this tradition35 but it represents an altogether different motivation and focus of expression.
The Alevi aşık, to draw the distinction from the aşık of the folk romance (and principally Sunni) tradition, is a creator (or re-interpreter) and transmitter of songs on religious and social topics and issues and who also expresses the troubles and concerns of the Alevi community. The aşık performs a central role in Alevi worship and the finest and most renowned obtain a holy status because of the significance attached to the lyrics (Yaman and Erdemir 2006, 59-60). It is also a dedicated and deeply committed pursuit. Taken as a whole, Alevi (and Bektaşi) aşık-s are responsible for an extraordinarily active and prolific body of lyric composition.
Özmen‘s (1998) monumental five volume collection covering seven centuries of
Alevi-Bektaşi poetry includes more than five hundred poets, many being represented by only a sample and fraction of their attributed compositions. And this must represent a mere portion of what has been produced in the oral tradition over centuries. The ‗complete‘ collections of Pir Sultan Abdal lyrics include around four
34 On the hikâye minstrel tradition see Başgöz (2008), Eberhard (1955), Silay (1998), Moyle (1990) and Erdener (1995). 35 It is also the case that within the society that the eastern Anatolian hikâye minstrel tradition operates Alevi aşık-s may consider the need to deliberately conceal their Alevi identity, as in the case of Aşık Pünhani (1917-1988) from the Sarıkamış region (Başgöz 200κ, ι2).
49 hundred deyiş (Avcı 2006; Kaya 1999; Pir Sultan Abdal divanı 1996) though in 1934
Vahit Dede reported having seven hundred and twenty-three Pir Sultan nefes in his possession (Salcı 1934)! Doğan Kaya (1994) has compiled a collection of four hundred and seventy-two lyrics for the Sivas aşık Ruhsati (1835-1911) and a collection of Sıtkı Baba‘s (1κ65-1928) deyiş runs to over two hundred pages (Gül
1984). Twentieth century Alevi aşık-s have produced substantial bodies of lyrics for which we retain evidence through their published collections. Tanırlı Aşık Yener‘s
(1928-2009) collected deyiş, for example, fill a book of nearly eight hundred pages with almost six hundred lyrics (Yener 2000). Aşık Daimi‘s (1932-1983) collected lyrics amount to over four hundred and fifty pages at roughly one deyiş per page
(Orhan 1999) and published collections of works by renowned aşık-s such as Aşık
Mahzuni Şerif (1939-2002), Nimri Dede (1909-1986) and Melûli (1892-1989) include over two hundred pages of deyişler (Şerif 1999; Buran 2006; Özpolat and
Erbil 2006).
Establishing the point to which we may look back to the origins of Alevi aşık tradition is in part problematic for the same reasons that defining ‗Alevi‘ is problematic, since it depends in some part on the perspective of modern concept of
Alevi society and culture. The mystical poetry of the Sufis of medieval Anatolia certainly influenced the later Alevi tradition; so, for example, the Hurufi poet Nesimi is counted among the great masters in Alevi tradition. The dominant figure in
Anatolian mystical and Turkish folk literature generally is Yunus Emre whose work has had a pervasive influence on the aşık-s of Turkish Anatolia (Köprülü 2006, 368).
The inclusive tendencies and perspective of modern Alevis view Yunus Emre as an aşık in the Alevi-Bektaşi tradition and anthologies of Alevi aşık-s particularly when
50 associated in the broader definition of Alevi and Bektaşi literature commonly include his poetry36. This inclusiveness is challenged by the view that sees Yunus more properly located in a broader Islamic tradition and while he may be reasonably associated with the Bektaşi mysticism he cannot be counted among the historically distinct ―eastern Bektashi‖, that is the Alevi (Başkal 2010).
In fact the seven established ‗great‘ aşık-s or ozan-s, that is the yedi ulular (or yedi ulu ozan), firmly establish the formative period as the late fifteenth and, particularly, the sixteenth centuries. The seven are Nesimi (d. 1418), Yemini (fl. early sixteenth century), Virani (fl. early sixteenth century), Hatayi (Shah Ismail, d. 1524), Fuzuli (d.
1556), Pir Sultan Abdal (fl. mid-late sixteenth century) and Kul Himmet (fl. late sixteenth century)37. Lyrics attributed to Nesimi, Fuzuli, Virani and Yemini are among those that are still performed in Alevi cem rituals, however it is the three great sixteenth century aşık-s Hatayi, Pir Sultan Abdal and Kul Himmet that are particularly associated with Anatolian Alevi identity. The development of a body of deyişler attributed to these aşık in a simpler more direct Turkish and the association of powerful charismatic identities, most evident in the case of Pir Sultan, suggests that these voices – the lyrics attributed to them – spoke more completely to the lives of the kızılbaş (Alevi) communities. This is manifested through a lyric corpus combining batıni (esoteric) themes on steadfastness and commitment to the true
‗way‘, exemplified by the ehlibeyt, together with the social and political themes often expressing opposition to an oppressive government or general injustice and suffering.
So the lyric songs of Pir Sultan Abdal, Hatayi and Kul Himmet earned a central place in the ritual life of the kızılbaş Alevi where such authoritative personas and identities
36 See the collections of Özmen (1998: 1), Gölpınarlı (1963), Koca (1990) and Yıldırım (1995). 37 See Ulusoy‘s Yedi ulu‟lar ([n.d.]).
51 are maintained and affirmed; consequently enabling and extending the reach of the deyiş, a vehicle suited to the plain and direct language that is most evident in the lyrics attributed to Pir Sultan Abdal, to reflect broader social issues and to inspire the creative and interpretive tradition of the Alevi aşık that has continued at least up to the end of the twentieth century.
It remains to be seen how well, indeed whether, this tradition may survive into the internationalised and media-connected world of the twenty-first century. However, the deaths of prominent late twentieth century aşıks, some tragically such as Muhlis
Akarsu and Nesimi Çimen in the 1993 attack on the Madımak hotel in Sivas and others such as Mahzuni Şerif and Mahmut Erdal of natural causes, do seem to suggest the end of an era and active young aşık-s with claims to authority and genuine inspiration such as Dertli Divani (b. 1962) appear increasingly rare. Alevis themselves recognise the changing social circumstances, urbanisation and technology that contribute to the disappearing tradition of the creative aşık.
Nowadays, the artists prefer to compile the poems and their tunes, perform them in public, rather than compose new ones. It can be seen that the enthusiastic and socially thematic literature and music of Alevisim are almost in a process of transformation. Though poems, düaz and semah of Pir Sultan and Şah Hatayi are performed in cems enthusiastically, new literary and musical works lack their depth. The bard tradition is replaced with popular artists who are educated in the conservatoires. The albums of these artists attract attention and are liked by the people. (Yaman and Erdemir 2006, 61)
The important point that Yaman and Erdemir make is that the processes observed are transformational. In part the objective of this study, although more narrowly focused
52 on the content, form and expressive interpretation of the deyiş itself, is to provide a way of looking at significant aspects of how Alevi songs, deyiş, evince meaning in the context of expressive culture that may inform future study of how Alevis view and manage such social transformation.
2.3 Pir Sultan Abdal
2.3.1 Introduction: the distraction of identity
Of all the great Alevi figures, particularly those animating the lyric tradition in which
Alevi belief and ideas are communicated, Pir Sultan Abdal appears as the most strikingly dimensional in the range of lyrics attributed to him which embraces not only fundamental Alid kızılbaş expression and mystical sentiments but also lyrics that assert his character and his fate as the signal demonstration of the life of conviction to the ‗true way‘. In his renowned martyrdom by a figure representing both oppressive authority (an Ottoman governor named Hızır Paşa) and personal betrayal (this being his own former disciple) Pir Sultan Abdal is the figure who embodies the connection with sufferings and the martyrdom of Husayn and Hasan for the Anatolian kızılbaş (Alevi). He is less removed from the people than the earlier martyr Seyyid Nesimi, also counted among the seven great masters of Alevi lyric tradition and whose martyrdom to some degree inspires Pir Sultan‘s38, and as such his story has found in its fundamental contrast of inner fidelity and steadfastness with
38 Seyyid Nesimi‘s martyrdom – legend has him flayed alive – for his ―bold espousal‖ (Birge 1994, 59) of Mansūr al-Hall j‘s assertion of an ‟l-Haqq (Turkish: enel Hak or enelhak, I am the Truth or I am God) also provides a direct connection to the brutal martyrdom – involving flagellation and dismemberment – of Hall j as the ―first high-profile Sufi to be executed in such a prominent manner by a Muslim government‖ who ―was to some extent a willing participant in his own martyrdom‖ and ―who is remembered [in Persian and Turkish Sufi traditions] as something of a Husayn- or Jesus- like figure whose death was entirely the result of an evil government and vile mob working together against a blameless holy man‖ (Cook 2007, 68).
53 worldly corruption and dissembling a long resonance equal to the changing times and circumstances. As Faroqhi suggests, in Pir Sultan‘s opposition to the worldly excesses of the Ottoman Sultan there is a resonance that was readily adopted by the leftwing protestors four hundred years later in the 1960s and 1970s (Faroqhi 2005,
98). In their evocation of character, circumstance (specifically his fate at the hands of
Hızır Paşa) and place – the Anatolian landscape – the lyrics of Pir Sultan Abdal tantalise with the suggestion of historical identity and situating that identity has become a central concern for scholars and popular writers alike.
Many of the lyrics attributed to Pir Sultan Abdal suggest a historical context that can certainly be situated in the history of Ottoman-Safavid conflicts in the sixteenth century, enough indeed for some historians to boldly assert an active role in such conflicts. Shaw for example states ―the great Kızılbaş rebel and supporter, Pir Sultan
Abdal, participated actively in the revolts against the sultan around Sivas before being executed for his crimes‖ (Shaw 1976, 149) although he does not state which revolt in particular and the evidence for such claims is based only on the evidence of the orally transmitted lyrics. Similarly the Turkish historian Halil İnalcık on the basis of the same evidence (the lyric poems) asserts that Pir Sultan Abdal expressed the feelings and political ambitions of the kızılbaş during the time of the Ottoman-
Safavid wars of 1534-1535 (Inalcik 1973, 194-195). As Vansina notes in respect to oral tradition: ―traditions about events are only kept because the events were thought to be important or significant‖ (Vansina 1985, 118); and further: ―the importance accorded to events is a matter of general consensus in a community [and] is tied to the social impact of such an event‖ (Vansina 1985, 119). If we understand that it is the significance or importance of events that compel the persistence of event memory
54 in the oral lyric tradition then it is the truth (perceived, received and expressed) of the events, that is to say, their meaning, more than the factual detail or accuracy, that is functionally critical in the historical construction of the persona.
The lyrics of Pir Sultan Abdal in their expression of ‗event truths‘ nevertheless afford significant temptation to look for historical detail and fact and this has characterised a central concern of scholarship in respect to his identity as a leader, rebel and martyr. Any encounter with Pir Sultan Abdal necessarily involves addressing the issue of identity – the historical fact – as an engaging distraction from the issue of persona – the embodiment of received and expressed truths.
2.3.2 The (re)construction of historical identity
While there are no known contemporaneous written sources that definitely identify
Pir Sultan there also seems little cause to doubt that there was indeed a historical identity behind the persona of Pir Sultan Abdal and that he lived all or a major part of his life in the sixteenth century. To establish some context we know, for example, of
Shah Ismail, the first Safavid Shah of Iran as an historical identity who also composed poetry in Turkish and whose poetic legacy as been maintained or more accurately reconstructed and nuanced in the Alevi oral tradition39. Moreover, there is no tradition of mere invention in respect to the aşık composers and transmitters of deyiş among the Alevi. The importance and authority attributed to the aşık-s as the composers and transmitters of Alevi culture, which is fundamentally oral, argues against such possiblity.
39 See Gallagher (2004) on the poetic legacy of Shah Ismail in Alevi-Bektaşi tradition.
55 Many researchers have tried to locate the historical Pir Sultan and most published editions of the lyrics attributed to him address this issue to a greater or lesser degree.
The attempts to locate the historical identity are necessarily based, in large part, on finding plausible connections between known historical circumstances and the content of his songs along with a concordance of his putative life with historical record and scraps of group biographical data – suggestive of, if not strictly, a prosopographical approach. Specifically this comes down to two fundamental contentions: that Pir Sultan was involved in rebellious activity against the Ottoman authorities (in support of the Safavids) when such activity was fervent during the sixteenth century; and, that he was executed by an Ottoman governor by the name of
Hızır Paşa. To this might be added the documentary evidence of the Menâkıbu‟l- esrar behcetü‟l-ahrâr in which, in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century manuscripts, we have the first record of lyric works attributed to Pir Sultan. Since the other poets included in this buyruk such as Hatâyi (Shah Ismail), Nesimi and
Kaygusuz Abdal, are among the major Alevi-Bektaşi poets, it would seem that Pir
Sultan‘s name and reputation was sufficiently established by this time to be included in such company in this text.
It is not my purpose here to enter into, nor specifically critique, the arguments for or against particular datings in detail in order to establish or suggest a definitive position. It is more important to emphasise the prevailing interest in locating Pir
Sultan Abdal in time which may reflect a desire to reach a historicist interpretation of the persona. This interest is specifically focused on establishing the date of his death
(from which therefore his approximate period of birth and the years he was active may also be deduced) and the likely uprising he may have participated in. Other
56 issues also arise from situating the historical person, such as his possible travels, particularly to the Balkans and Iran.
The establishment of Safavid rule in Iran under Ismail I with his adherence to Shi‘a
Islam opened up the Anatolian landscape to popular religious infused conflict and rebellion. In his promulgation of a charismatic hegemony in the poetically transmitted persona of the Shah he ―embodied a range of sacred manifestations‖
(Gallagher 2009, 174), including the eschatological figure of the mahdi and the reincarnation of the Imam Ali, the aspiration of Turcoman tribes could find a religious and political leadership which ―led thousands to rally to him in expectation of the immanent reappearance of the Twelfth Imam‖ (Finkel 2005, 97). The fertility of Anatolia for this message was fed by the already established presence of a plenitude of dervish adherents and itinerant mendicants. Of particular interest in this context are the Abdals of Rum with their devotion to Ali, Hasan, Husayn and the
Twelve Imams40. As Barkey (2008, 168) observes, there existed,
a vast network of individual dervish figures (Haydarîs, Babaîs, Hamzavîs, and Abdals), who were mostly in ideological and cultural conflict with the centralizing Ottoman state and who were especially dangerous to the state because they travelled, spreading ideas and sedition and taking advantage of the fluidity of premodern society as well as of different centres of heterodox worship.
In 1511 the first major kızılbaş uprising occurred around Teke in south-western
Anatolia lead by Karabıyıklıoğlu Hasan Halife better known as Şahkulu (Shah Kulu
40 Karamustafa (1994; 1993) gives a vivid picture of a number of these renunciant, antinomian dervishes in the period leading up to the middle of the sixteenth century. While many of these dervishes were wild in appearance and behaviour and socially marginal they also had a familial relationships with institutional Sufism being its ―rebel progeny‖ (Karamustafa 1994, 99).
57 or Shah Kuli). While this uprising emerged out of the opportunity provided by
Ottoman dynastic struggles the religious and political character and threat to the
Ottoman Sultan was clear in the timing of the uprising (being during Muharrem the anniversary of Husayn‘s martyrdom) and Şahkulu‘s support for Shah Ismail41. When
Selim I became Ottoman Sultan in 1512 open conflict with Ismail ensued climaxing in the defeat of Ismail at the battle of Çaldıran in the eastern borderlands of Anatolia.
While Ismail‘s defeat cost him prestige in Iran it also left the Ottoman Sultan determined to purge kızılbaş dissent in eastern Anatolia (Shaw 1976, 82). At times during the rest of the sixteenth century the remnant inspiration of Ismail‘s charismatic declaration and Alid claims among the kızılbaş and other antinomian groups would draw the Ottoman authorities into assertive and oppressive action as the ferman-s relating to the suppression of the kızılbaş in the mühimme defterleri from the 1560 to the 1580s attest (see below). Many of the lyrics attributed to Pir
Sultan Abdal, whether or not they were composed during this period or later, by Pir
Sultan or others, do exemplify the lasting constructions of the power and persistence of that inspiration. The articulation of hope and identity in the Alid declarations and inspiration of the ‗Shah‘ provided the powerful revelatory and coalescing force for the proto-Alevi antinomian groups and disaffected rural populations that went to the distinction of fundamental identity not only economic or social circumstance. As
Barkey (2008, 178) summarises, seeing this process as a factor contributing to the consolidation of Sunni identity of the Ottoman state:
As networks of Turcoman peasants and tribesmen got caught in the web of geopolitical rivalries, they added a religious-ideological layer to the socioeconomic discontent, expressing themselves through the Sunnî-Shi‘ia
41 See Finkel (2005, 98-99), Pitcher (1972, 101), Shaw (1976, 78-79).
58 divisions, which provided Ottoman authorities both opportunity and cause for further consolidation of the political and religious identity of the empire.
In the decade and a half following the Şahkulu uprising and the Ottoman-Safavid wars climaxing at Çaldıran there were a number of other disturbances particularly in the region ranging from Tokat and Amasya to Bozok (Yozgat) including the Nur Ali
Halife uprising in 1512 and the Şeyh Celâl uprising in 1519. The latter assumed the name of Shah Ismail, proclaiming himself the Messiah, and again challenged the state from the ideological and political position of Shi‘a identity and Safavid support.
He gave his name to a later phenomenon of banditry and mercenaries, the celalis, which would plague the Ottomans from the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century42.
In the mid-1520s there were further serious and widespread revolts in Anatolia ostensibly arising from actions in the region of Cilicia to undertake cadastral surveys towards assessing tax revenues. As the revolts spread they took on the now familiar political and religious character (Finkel 2005, 142; Shaw 1976, 92). The first of these were Baba Zünnun and Zünnunoğlu Halil uprisings in 1526-1527 but the most significant was the revolt of Kalender Çelebi in 1527.
Kalender Çelebi (or Kalender Şah) was a Kalenderi dervish and descendent (at least spiritually) of the eponymous Bektaşi saint Hacı Bektaş. The Kalenderis were reputudedly characterised by itinerancy, the beating of drums, chanting and singing, and a direct communication with ‗divine truth‘ (Karamustafa 1994, 65-67). The band of rebels who joined Kalender Çelebi included Abdal and Kalenderi dervishes
42 On Şeyh Celâl and the celalis see Barkey (2008; 1994) , Finkel (2005, 113; 180f) and Shaw (1976, 86).
59 (Inalcik 1973, 195), the latter being in Barkey‘s description ―a mystical fraternity organized around incorporation and dissent‖ (Barkey 2008, 165). Adding social and political elements to the mystical leadership the rebels were joined by dispossessed fief holders following the annexation as an Ottoman province of the principality of
Dulgadir in south-east Anatolia in 1522. So the rebel band under Kalender Çelebi grew in force around Elbistan to be eventually crushed by a force led by no less than the Ottoman grand vizier himself, İbrahim Paşa, near Tokat to the north-west of
Sivas43. Avcı indicates the widespread nature of the revolt noting a number of places in central Anatolia in which uprisings associated with Kalender Çelebi emerged including Kırşehir, Nevşehir, Kayseri, Maraş, Bozok (Yozgat), Tokat and Kazova
(Avcı 199κ, 26).
The Kalender Çelebi revolt is one of the principal candidates that has been proposed for a rebellion in which Pir Sultan may have been involved. The most notable scholar arguing for this is İsmail Kaygusuz who sees in a number of Pir Sultan Abdal attributed lyrics references to Kalender Çelebi and the landscape of that uprising.
Two of the most important lyrics Kaygusuz cites in support of this view are those beginning Yürüyüş eyledi Urum üstüne (He made a march upon Anatolia / The beautiful successor of Ali‘s line is coming) and Gözleyi gözleyi gözüm dört oldu
(Watching and waiting I was all eyes / My Ali, why are you idle, your time has come)44. Kaygusuz noting the outbreak of the uprising in the Ankara-Kırşehir region as being in the vicinity of the Hacı Bektaş Dergahı45 makes the point that in Pir
Sultan‘s lyric ‗the beautiful successor of Ali‘s line‘ comes from the west –
43 On the Kalender Çelebi (Şah) rebellion see Shaw (1976, 92), Imber (2002, 50), Inalcik (1973, 95) and Finkel (2005, 142). For Turkish sources see the monograph by Avcı (1998). 44 Full texts and translations are included in the Translations chapter below; see sections 5.5.50 and 5.5.26. 45 The dergah is in Hacıbektaş town located halfway between Kırşehir and Nevşehir.
60 ―mağripten çıkar görünür görünür‖ (emerging from the West again he appears) – not the east, not from Iran or Horasan. Kaygusuz (1995, 365-368) equates the ‗one of
Ali‘s descent who is coming‘ and another name reference ―Koca Haydar Şah-ı Cihan torunu‖ as none other than Kalender Çelebi46. And in the deyiş Gözleyi gözleyi gözüm dört oldu he sees the pivotal line ―sancağımız Kazova‟ya dikilsin‖ (let our banner be raised at Kazova) as a rallying point and cry for those to join from afar:
Kızıl Irmak gibi bendinden boşan / Hama‟dan Mardin‟dan Sivas‟a döşen (Like the
Red River breaking loose from its barrage / Spreading from Hama and Mardin to
Sivas). The point being that Kazova is the plain between Sivas and Tokat the territory with which Pir Sultan is most identified.
Kaygusuz develops his argument at some length and as such provides an example of how with the ambiguous evidence of the lyrics it is possible to suggest associations with specific historical events. Kaygusuz‘s view certainly receives some support from Avcı47, one of the most prominent Pir Sultan Abdal scholars, who concludes that Şah Kalender (Çelebi) is one of the possible referents for the motif of the ‗Shah‘ in Pir Sultan‘s lyrics along with Ali, Husayn, Shah Ismail and Shah Tahmasp; and that the Kalender Çelebi rebellion is one of the most important influences on the development of the identity of Pir Sultan (Avcı 2006, 39ι).
Kaygusuz also sees Pir Sultan‘s involvement with the Kalender Çelebi uprising as explaining the existence of a Pir Sultan Abdal tradition in the Balkans. To explain
46 The line is open to interpretation. Kaygusuz (1995, 366) reads it as meaning the ‗descendent of Monarch of the World, Koca Haydar‘ that is Koca Haydar (Kalender Çelebi), Hacı Bektaşı‘s descendent. However, this line is read by Fuat (1977, 101) and Avcı (2003, 28) to refer to Shah Tahmasp, Shah Ismail‘s son and Sheik Haydar‘s grandson, the Safavid monarch at the time of the Kalender Çelebi uprising. 47 While Avcı only touched on any connection of Pir Sultan to the Kalender Çelebi uprising in his monograph on the rebellion (Avcı 199κ) he considered the evidence at length in his later works (Avcı 2003; 2004; 2006).
61 this tradition, Turgut Koca asserts the existence of a distinct fifteenth century Serezli
Pir Sultan, the spiritual leader of the Macedonian tekke-s of Bahçe and Cuma (Koca
1990, 145-150). Kaygusuz suggests however that Pir Sultan Abdal may have fled to the Balkans and into a period of hiding to escape slaughter following the uprising
(Kaygusuz 1995, 377-381) while Avcı (2006, 318-323) again reviewing the evidence suggests Koca‘s conclusion is based on a name confusion, associating evidence of
‗Piri Baba‘ with ‗Pir Sultan‘. As Avcı notes there is a common widespread tradition of using appellations such as ‗baba‟, ‗dede‟ and ‗sultan‟ (Avcı 2006, 322)48.
Perhaps the most evocative records of the times in which the historic identity or identities behind the persona of Pir Sultan Abdal lived are to be found in the mühimme defterleri (records of significant issues) which record the orders sent from the Ottoman Divan to local authorities (sancak bey-s, beylerbeyi-s) to deal with problems such as rebellious and insurgent activities. These records commence in the mid-sixteenth century and a number of those for the later part of the century are orders to deal with insurgent pro-Safavid kızılbaş activity. These records are often brief and tantalising, opening the door, if only fleetingly, on such activity in
Anatolia49. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that some researchers have identified possible connections with Pir Sultan Abdal in the mühimme defterleri.
Though there is no mention per se of Pir Sultan, Saim Savaş suggests a certain named Şeyh Haydar as a possible candidate for the historical Pir Sultan Abdal,
48 Claims for a Serezli Pir Sultan persist as in the work of Yaltırık (2002, 37) on the tasavvufi halk müziği of Thrace which includes many texts attributed to Pir Sultan including ones such as Karşıda görünen ne güzel yayla that are also associated with the Anatolian Banazlı Pir Sultan Abdal. It is also instructive that the most important collector of Pir Sultan nefes (deyiş) from the Balkan region (Thrace), Vahid Dede (Vahit Lütfi Salcı) makes no claim nor hint of distinction of identity in his early publication on Pir Sultan (Salcı 1934). Birge certainly gives no particular prominence to Pir Sultan in his work which relies heavily on Albanian Bektaşi informants. He mentions Pir Sultan only once, quoting a verse from Ergun‘s 1930 publication Bektaşi Şairleri (Birge 1994, 137). 49 Imber (1979) gives a detailed account of these records in reference to the subjugation of the kızılbaş in the sixteenth century.
62 noting the fact that Pir Sultan‘s real name was Haydar (Savaş 2002)50. Şeyh Haydar makes an appearance in the historical record in 1585 in a village near Amasya, apparently after a long absence, claiming to have been with the Shah and having undertaken to raise 40,000 men from the region for his cause. Şeyh Haydar was captured by Ahmet Çavuş and imprisoned in Çorum (Savaş 2002, κ3-85; Imber
1979, 262-263). Savaş (2002, 85) further proposes the possibility of him being removed from Çorum prison to the Toprakkale prison in the provincial centre Sivas, thus effectively connecting the historically recorded Şeyh Haydar with the legendary execution of Pir Sultan in Sivas. His indictment was as a halife (sanctioned agent) of the kızılbaş active for some time in the Çorum and Bozok regions (Imber 1979, 262).
His father, Şeyh Tuzi (or Türabi) was recorded as having been executed for leading a kızılbaş heresy (Imber 1979,262-263; Savaş 2002, κ5)51. It is also worth noting that the name, Şeyh Haydar, evokes the father of Shah Ismail and the deviser of the symbolism of the twelve gored scarlet headgear responsible for the pejorative appellation applied by the Ottomans of ‗red head‘, kızılbaş (Savory 1980, 19). While the identification the historical person of Pir Sultan can be no more than speculative, it is possible to see historically constructed elements that may have found their way into legend such as the active agency of kızılbaş activitiy, imprisonment, execution, names and locations.
One further documented case of Safavid inspired insurgency should be mentioned, that of the so called ‗False Ismail‘ which also appears as a plausible fifth column
50 So legend tells us and such is the commonly held understanding. Aslanoğlu rather complicates the issue by identifying the poet of the lyric who associates this name with the mahlas as an identity distinct from the eponymous Pir Sultan. 51 It is worth noting that in the songs and legend of Pir Sultan Abdal no mention is made of his father. If his father were a notable kızılbaş leader we might expect that fact to indeed be proclaimed in his songs.
63 movement that may have contributed to the legendary Pir Sultan or at least gives a picture of the milieu in which he lived. Pir Sultan is certainly not mentioned by name in relation to the False Ismail events though at least one notable follower (halife) is identified by the name of Yunus (Imber 1979, p. 251-254)52.
This False Ismail (Düzmece or Sahte Şah İsmail) suddenly appears in the mühimme defterleri in the middle of 1578 and disappears equally mysteriously a few months later around January 1579. False Ismail claimed to be Shah Ismail and is reported to have emerged from the Syrian borderland, organising rebellion in the Elbistan region and attracting a large following particularly in the Bozok (Yozgat) region and moving on to Hacıbektaş53. He may have been acting independently, as an agent of the Iranians or indeed inspired by the factional rivalries following the death of Shah
Tahmasp leading to the accession and short-lived reign of Ismail II (August 1576-
November 1577). In the next three years there appeared a number of false (pseudo)
Ismails in various Safavid territories. As Savory notes these pseudo-Ismails could go to some length to impersonate, physically, Ismail II, giving ―a strangely messianic quality more proper to extremist Shi‗ite and other heterodox beliefs than the question of succession to the Safavid throne‖ (Savory 1971, 468). The aspect of the False
Ismail mentioned in the mühimme defteri as described by the halife Yunus mentioned above at the very least appears striking and outlandish (in the Anatolian context) being Persian speaking, tall, blue-eyed with thick blond beard and long hair (Imber
1979). These pseudo-Ismails were described as qalandar (kalender) dervishes
52 Specifically named kızılbaş insurgents do appear in documents from the time which makes the absence of any mention of ‗Pir Sultan‘ all the more intriguing. For example, Öz in his collection of Ottoman documents connected to Alevilik (in modern Turkish translation) includes a ferman dated from 1577 that mentions a kızılbaş (rafızi) sought in the Elbistan area named Yitilmiş Abdal (Öz 1997, 63). 53 On the False Ismail events see Imber (1979), Savaş (2002), Söylemez (2004) and Savory (1971).
64 suggesting antinomian and charismatic influence. The appeal, if only fleeting, of the
False Ismail in Anatolia may have been in the persistence of this messianic and charismatic eminence aided by the easy confusion of appellations; for while the False
Ismail events may have arisen from the succession issues surrounding Shah
Tahmasp‘s son Ismail II, the Anatolian kızılbaş may well have been convinced of the return of Tahmasp‘s father the messianic Ismail I54.
While a picture of the sixteenth century Anatolian world in which an identity, or identities, remembered in the persona of Pir Sultan can be drawn, the problem remains that, despite plausible and attractive propositions, no certain identification of
Pir Sultan can be made in the documentary record studied to date55. Events such as the Shah Kulu and Kalender Çelebi revolts, the rebellious activities of Şeyh Haydar and call to rally to the Shah by the likes of the False Ismail give a plausible picture of a society of villagers, tribesmen and some lesser land holders (sipahi-s)56 receptive for and animated, if sporadically and at times with little tangible objective, by fleeting and charismatic identities – the stuff, indeed, to find meaning in legend.
54 Imber (1979, 254) concludes that the episode demonstrated the weakness of the political opposition of the kızılbaş to Ottoman rule, the receptiveness for allegiance to a self-styled ‗Shah‘ betraying little notion of who the Shah actually was. Imber is referring to an unclear concept that the followers may have had in regard to the real political identities, however the ‗Shah‘ as a messianic figure may not have been vague to the hopes and objectives of the kızılbaş themselves. 55 This lack of any contemporary documentary record to identify the historical Pir Sultan behind the persona leaves open the possibility of all manner of speculation upon improbable identities. Perhaps the most extraordinary assertion is that of Erdoğan Çınar (2007) who reads the absence of mention of Pir Sultan in the Ottoman records as the significant point. Çınar sees this lacuna as evidence to suggest that the source of Pir Sultan‘s identity emerges not from the sixteenth century but that its origin can be found in the identity of the seventh century founder of the Paulicians Constantine (‗Pir‘) Silvanus. 56 This follows Imber‘s concise characterisation of the Anatolian kızılbaş at this time (Imber 2002, 249). Sipahi-s held small military fiefs (timar) or tax concessions in return for their service.
65 2.3.3 The legend of Pir Sultan Abdal
The legendary story of Pir Sultan Abdal is understood from songs that are part of the
Pir Sultan Abdal tradition and in folk legends, the latter collected particularly from the Sivas region. The following gives an outline of the essentials of the Pir Sultan
Abdal story57. According to legend and song, Pir Sultan‘s family came originally from Yemen and was descended from Imam Ali‘s grandson, the fourth imam Zeynel-
Abidin58. His family settled in Banaz north of Sivas is the shadow of Yıldız Dağı
(Star Mountain). Pir Sultan‘s real name was Haydar.
Figure 1: The author standing by the stone believed to have been brought by Pir Sultan from Horasan to Banaz.
57 The story is recounted to a greater or lesser extent in most of the books devoted to Pir Sultan and even expanded into novel form by Pehlivan (1993) and Ural (1990). For simplicity, the version given here is largely follows that of Fuat (1999) and Öztelli (1971). Boratav draws on his valuable field research undertaken in 1939 in the Sivas region including in Banaz for the best documented account of the folk legend (Gölpınarlı and Boratav 1943) from which many have subsequently drawn. 58 Alternatively, and perhaps more plausibly, it is recounted that Pir Sultan‘s family came from the Horasan region (Khorasan) in north-eastern Iran, a place noted for its strong connection to Turkmen Sufic and esoteric (batıni) dervish traditions and the birthplace of the Bektaşi patron saint Hacı Bektaş Veli. Boratav visiting Banaz in 1939 reports that he was shown the mill stone (taş) reputedly brought by Pir Sultan from Horasan (Gölpınarlı and Boratav 1943, 34). Makal (1977, 68; 1999, 42) visiting Banaz four decades later reports villagers saying this stone was brought by the Pir from Yemen by horse. Aşık Banazlı Nuri (Nuri Kılıç, also known as Aşık Deryanî, d. 1997) tried to unravel the mystery of Pir Sultan‘s family origin for Makal saying all Turks come from Central Asia through the mixing pot (‗harman yeri‟ literally ‗threshing place‘) of Horasan but from the perspective of belief (‗ibadet‟) and essence (‗mana‟) they come from Yemen, Hijaz, Mosul, Damascus and Bagdad (Makal 1999, 44). The stone can still be seen in Banaz.
66
One day when the seven year old Haydar was giving his father‘s sheep pasture near
Yıldız Dağı he fell asleep and began to dream. In his dream he saw a white bearded old man holding liquor (içki) in one hand and an apple in the other. Haydar first took the liquor and drank; then after taking the apple and seeing the palm of the old man‘s hand was a gleaming green he understood that this man before him was Hacı Bektaş
Veli. In the dream Hacı Bektaş Veli gave Haydar the name Pir Sultan. Thus he found himself among the erenler59 playing and singing his poems with the name Pir Sultan and his fame became widespread.
Some time later, in the village of Sofular, located between Sivas and Hafik, there lived a certain Hızır who, hearing of Pir Sultan‘s fame, ventured to Banaz. Hızır spent seven years with Pir Sultan (for some time as his mürid60); then one day he came to the Pir asking for his favour and advice as to what post (makam) he should come to. Pir Sultan replied that Hızır would become a great man and, ultimately, would return to hang him, Pir Sultan.
In due course Hızır goes to Istanbul and with Pir Sultan‘s support he continues there and becomes a Pasha. Finally he becomes the Vezir (governor) of Sivas where he gains a reputation for suppressing the poor, eating unlawful food (haram), and dishonesty. At this time in Sivas there lived two judges (kadı) also known for unlawful indulgence (eating haram). Their names were Kara Kadı (Black Judge) and
Sarı Kadı (Yellow Judge). Pir Sultan gives the same names, karakadı and sarıkadı, to his two dogs. Hearing of this the judges have Pir Sultan brought to Sivas for
59 Those seeking and attaining the enlightenment of the divine truth. 60 Disciple.
67 questioning whereby Pir Sultan says to them that his dogs are better than them because unlike the judges they do not eat haram food. And to prove it, Pir Sultan challenges the judges to a test. The town‘s worthies (hacılar, hocalar) prepare a pot of helal (rightful) food and a pot of haram food. The judges sit down and eat of the haram food while Pir Sultan‘s dogs do not go near it but go straight to the helal food.
The worthies declare that the good dogs prevailed over the bad judges. On this event
Pir Sultan composes and sings the song beginning: Koca başlı koca kadı (The fat headed old judge)61.
Meanwhile a fetva is declared by the Sultan forbidding the mention of the name of the Shah – that is the Safavid Shah of Iran – and giving orders to kill those followers of Ali (the kızılbaş). Pir Sultan records this in the song beginning: Fetva vermiş koca başlı kör Müftü (The fat headed blind Mufti has passed judgment)62. Pir Sultan rises to this challenge and makes it clear he will not abandon his devotion to the Shah and sings the song beginning: Padişah katlime ferman dilese (If the Sultan desires an order for my murder). As Pir Sultan begins to stir up trouble, Hızı Paşa sends for Pir
Sultan and makes to treat his former şeyh (teacher) well, placing good food before him. But Pir Sultan is not swayed and tells Hızır Paşa that he (Hızır) has left the true path (yol), has eaten haram food and stolen the inheritance of orphans. Pir Sultan says he will not eat, not even his dogs would eat and to prove this he calls to his dogs to come from Banaz63. Hızır Paşa becomes angry and casts Pir Sultan, his former spiritual master, into the prison at Sivas‘s Toprakkale.
61 See text and translation in the Translations chapter, section 5.5.35. 62 See text and translation in the Translations chapter, section 5.5.20. 63 A distance of some forty-five kilometres!
68 Hızır Paşa remains uneasy inside and after a time he brings Pir Sultan before him again and says if Pir Sultan will sing three songs without mentioning the Shah he will pardon him. In response to this Pir Sultan does indeed sing three songs but entwines all three from beginning to end with many references to the Shah. These are the songs beginning: Hızır Paşa bizi berdar etmeden (Before Hızır Pasha hangs us), Kul olayım kalem tutan eline (I shall be at the mercy of the hand holding the pen) and
Karşıdan görünen ne güzel yayla (How beautiful the plateau opposite appears)64.
Hızır Paşa is enraged by Pir Sultan‘s response and orders him to be hanged. And so a gallows is erected in a place in Sivas called Keçibulan.
As Pir Sultan goes to his place of execution he sings the song beginning: Bize de
Banaz‟ da Pir Sultan derler (They call us in Banaz Pir Sultan)65. Hızır Paşa orders the populace to stone Pir Sultan while he proceeds to the gallows and commands death to anyone who does not follow this order. At this time, Pir Sultan‘s closest friend (musahib), Ali Baba, is troubled at what to do and so he casts a rose as though it were a stone. At this act Pir Sultan sings the song beginning: Şu kanlı zalimin ettiği işler (The deeds of that blood tainted tyrant)66 expressing the fact that he is wounded greatly by this dissembling act while the stones that the strangers throw do not touch him.
The next morning there is much talk in the coffee houses of Sivas. Someone says:
‗Hızır Paşa hanged Pir Sultan‘ while another says: ‗Impossible, I saw him this morning on the Koçhilar road, in Seyfebeli‘. Another says: ‗How can this be, I saw him this morning on the Malatya road, on the Kardeşler Pass‘. Someone replies:
64 See texts and translations in the Translations chapter, sections 5.5.1, 5.5.37 and 5.5.34. 65 See text and translation in the Translations chapter, section 5.5.9. 66 See text and translation in the Translations chapter, section 5.5.44.
69 ‗You are mistaken, I saw him this morning on the Yenihan road on the Şahna Pass‘.
To which another says: ‗I saw him this morning on the Tavra Narrows‘. So the people get up and go to the gallows place to look. There they see Pir Sultan‘s hırka
(dervish cloak) hanging on the gallows but he was gone. The Pasha‘s watchmen race out after him and come to the Kızılırmak (Red River) where they see Pir Sultan who has crossed over a bridge to the far bank of the river. Seeing the watchmen Pir Sultan calls out to the bridge to bend which it does and sinks into the water so the watchmen are left on the other side. Pir Sultan then goes to Horasan to the Shah and sings the songs beginning: İptıda bir sofu Şah‟a varınca (At first a devotee upon reaching the
Shah) and Diken arasında bir gül açıldı (A rose opened among the thorn)67. From
Horasan he goes to Ardabil where he dies and is buried.
Pir Sultan is believed to have had three sons, Seyyit Ali Sultan, Pir Mehmet and Er
Gaip Sultan (Pir Gaip); and one daughter, Senem, to whom a famous lament (ağıt) on her father‘s death is attributed68:
Pir Sultan kızıydım ben de Banaz‟da Kanlı yaş akıttım baharda güzde Dedemi astılar kanlı Sivas‟ta Darağacı ağlar Pir Sultan deyü69 (Fuat 1999, 160)
I am Pir Sultan‘s daughter and in Banaz I shed bloody tears in spring and autumn They hung my master in bloody Sivas The gallows tree weeps crying Pir Sultan
67 See texts and translations in the Translations chapter, sections 5.5.32 and 5.5.16. 68 Avcı provides a good account of the information we have about Pir Sultan‘s children (Avcı 2006, p. 375f). 69 The full text and translation in the Translations chapter, section 5.5.17. The text of version including in the Translations chapter is a slightly different variant taken from Ergun (1929).
70
2.3.4 Hızır Paşa
The central figure in both the historical and legendary encounter with Pir Sultan
Abdal is Hızır Paşa, the agent of his demise, according to the legend and the songs.
Because Hızır Paşa is believed to have been the vali (provincial governor) in Sivas responsible for Pir Sultan Abdal‘s execution, he is a figure more likely to appear in historical record, and thus the key to the historical location of Pir Sultan Abdal. This line of enquiry begins with the earliest publication concerning Pir Sultan Abdal by
Köprülü in 1928 (Köprülü 1997). Three possible Hızır Paşa-s are commonly identified:
1. A governor in the Damascus and Bagdad regions in the 1550s and 1560s who died around 1567. The proposition is that this governor while on his way to Bagdad may have passed through Sivas and so dealt with Pir Sultan Abdal around 1560.
2. A certain Deli (Crazy) Hızır Paşa a governor in the eastern Ottoman provinces from the 1580s until the early years of the seventeenth century who was briefly in Sivas in 1588 and 1590. So these dates are given as possible dates for Pir Sultan Abdal‘s execution.
3. Another Hızır Paşa is mentioned in a letter from Mehmet Hüdai to Sultan Ahmet I recommending action against the kızılbaş in the vicinity of Dobrici Zağra (in the Balkans). Köprülü (1997, 11) believes this is the Hızır Paşa that Pir Sultan Abdal refers to and thus would date his execution to sometime between 1603 and 1608.
In fact no Hızır Paşa in the historical record can be definitely associated with Pir
Sultan Abdal other than by the assumption of possible (and chance) association
71 through location and time. Indeed the name Hızır is not particularly rare in the sixteenth century Ottoman records70. The centrality of Hızır Paşa to the Pir Sultan
Abdal legend certainly suggests an authenticity to this relationship though it does not preclude the possibility of a confusion of names and identities in the oral tradition. In this context Makal reports that the people of Banaz, the principal keepers of the legend, had a rather ambiguous perception of the name. As the people of Banaz point out the name Hızır is in fact understood as sacred and should not be associated with wickedness – ―Hızır, diyor bizim için kutsaldır ... Hızır dedin mi kötülük düşünmeyeceksin‖ (Makal 1999, 31), ―Hızır, bir kutlu yaratıktır, adı kötülüğe karıştırılmamalı‖ (Makal 1999, 37) – since the name is associated with the immortal prophet-saint Hızır (Khidir), said to have drunk of the water of life and a guardian spirit for the dervish in his time of need (Birge 1994, 119). As the Banazlı Aşık Nuri sings:
Pir Sultan Abdal‟ım, kalmıştır nazır Elhamdülillah, sırrım meydanda, hazır Binbir ismi ile gelmiştir Hızır Daha ondan gayri pîr bulamadım (Makal 1999, 37)
I am Pir Sultan Abdal, he remains vigilant Thank God, my secret is in the open, present Hızır has come with his thousand and one names I was not able to find a master greater than him
70 See for example the Hızır Ağa-s, Hızır Beğ, Hızır Efendi-s, Hızır Çavuş-oğli and Hızır Paşa-s that appear in the pages of Selâniki Mustafa Efendi‘s history covering the period 1563 to 1600 (Selâniki 1999).
72 This leads to suggestions that Hızır should more properly be understood as the name
‗Hıdır‘71 or even that it is a corruption of hınzır (Makal 1999, 32) meaning a ‗swine‘ or ‗brutal‘ person. While the identity of Hızır Paşa is the most tantalising key to establish the dating of Pir Sultan Abdal‘s execution, there remains much ambiguity and uncertainty that precludes any definite association or conclusion in regards to establishing an historical Pir Sultan Abdal.
There is however, little doubt about the importance of the relationship of Pir Sultan
Abdal and Hızır Paşa in the legendary record. A feature of the legend of Pir Sultan
Abdal that pervades most presentations of his life is the personal story focusing on his resilience and steadfastness in his time of travail at the hands of his persecutor and ultimately executioner named as Hızır Paşa. The significant aspect of this story is the relationship of Pir Sultan Abdal and Hızır Paşa since, as we have seen above, the latter was formerly the notable disciple of Pir Sultan Abdal. The story is not merely one of oppression, corruption, rebellion and downfall: it is personal and is raised to universal levels because of this fact. It is the act of personal betrayal by
Hızır Paşa that elevates the mythology of Pir Sultan Abdal‘s steadfastness: ‗Dönen dönsün ben dönmezen yolumdan‟ (Let the one who turns away, turn, but I will not turn from my path)72 sings Pir Sultan. This is the great betrayal of Hızır Paşa, that he had turned from the true path – it is certainly as important as his position representing the Ottoman authorities. Similarly, in the famous song Şu kanlı zalimin ettiği işler it is the dissembling act of Pir Sultan Abdal‘s mürid, Ali Baba, in casting the rose in place of the stones, that is presented as the wounding betrayal. It is the
71 This is indeed how the name is pronounced in the Banaz Sivas dialect. Aşık Nuri clearly says Hıdır Paşa as can be heard on recordings made by David Grabias of Nuri singing Pir Sultan Abdal deyiş (Various 1999). 72 Text and translation can be found in the Translations chapter, section 5.5.36.
73 inner integrity that is betrayed by Ali Baba. Pir Sultan‘s final and fatal act of composing three songs calling on the (Safavid) Shah is rather more a personal affront and dismissal of Hızır Paşa‘s challenge not to do so in order to save his (Pir Sultan‘s) life, as it is any statement of political ideology.
The deyiş of Pir Sultan Abdal nevertheless do present a political context to the confrontation with Hızır Paşa and the judges (kadı) and religious authorities (müftü) of Sivas who are characterised as corrupt and hypocrites73. Pir Sultan Abdal‘s identity as a kızılbaş and his commitment to the Safavid Shah are explicit in the songs. This activity is clearly remembered in a lyric from the Banaz tradition attributed to an Aşık İsmail which describes the efforts of a descendent of Pir Sultan,
İnce Mehmet, in seeking confirmation and deed from the Hacı Bektaş dergahı of his lineage to present himself to the agents (halife) of the Shah and the Shah himself.
This deyiş recounts Pir Sultan‘s lineage from Ali, his taking up the cause of the
‗Great Shah‘ (the Safavid Shah) in the symbolic acceptance of the apple (elma), how
‗eighty thousand men‘ came out of Horasan, and how he accepted his fate as a martyr74. Yet the songs of Pir Sultan Abdal do not constitute an articulation of a political agenda, rather they express the aspiration of the antinomian kızılbaş dervishes (and those they represent) of Anatolia and a commitment to hope, in the person of the Great Shah, and to the virtuous and true way of the ehlibeyt and ultimately a challenge to the dissembling and the corrupt. But this is ultimately played out, as expressed in the songs, not on the rebel‘s battlefield, but in the fatal but highly personal confrontation between Pir Sultan Abdal and the representative of
73 See for example the lyrics Koca başlı koca kadı and Fetva vermiş koca başlı müftü in the Translations chapter, sections 5.5.35 and 5.5.20. 74 The full text and translation of Aşık İsmail‘s deyiş is included in the Translations chapter, section 5.7.1.
74 dissembling and corruption, Hızır Paşa. While the persona of Pir Sultan Abdal may be seen as historically constructed and contextualised, the meaning of the story that his persona represents, as revealed in the legends and songs maintained in oral tradition, is found in the morality rather than the historical or political fact or detail.
2.3.5 The typology of the Pir Sultan Abdal mahlas – what’s in a name?
The name Pir Sultan Abdal can be seen as a quite generic appellation if particularly exulted. Pir carries the meaning of a patron saint or the founder and leader of a tarikat, a dervish order or brotherhood; or, more simply, a spiritual master or leader75. Sultan clearly has connotations of high standing and for Alevi-Bektaşi-s refers to a saint or a great master of the tarikat. Korkmaz also notes is use in place of
‗you‘ (sen) among Alevi-Bektaşi (Korkmaz 2005a) and Anadol (2001, 20) notes its use as a sprititual title given to a Sufi şeyh (sheik). The basic meaning of Abdal is a
‗dervish‘ but also may refer specifically to one belonging to one of the ―mystical anarchist‖ (Karamustafa 1993) antinomian groups active in sixteenth century
Anatolia, that is the Rum Abdallar (Abdals of Anatolia)76. Birge (1994, 251) also notes a formal mystical meaning in respect to abdal connoting the ability to change from a physical state to a spiritual state.
The name thus constituted clearly designates Pir Sultan Abdal as a mystical leader and dervish of the highest order. It is, then, perhaps not so remarkable that we do encounter references in the historical record to other shadowy ‗Pir Sultans‘. It is perhaps rather more remarkable that they are indeed elusive, particularly in the
75 This and the following definitions follow Birge (1994) and Korkmaz (2005a). The latter gives a particularly detailed consideration of pir. 76 In Pir Sultan Abdal‘s mahlas it may perhaps even be suggested that ‗Abdal‘ is descriptive and used in an adjectival sense in respect to the nominative Pir Sultan.
75 historical record of sixteenth century Anatolia; and it is all the more tempting because of their scarcity to look for some connection to the Pir Sultan Abdal of legend no matter how tenuous. For example, Mustawfi, a contemporary (that is fourteenth century) source, mentions a certain Pir Sultan as being the son of the
Ilkhanid Rashid al-Din, the Persian historian and the brother of the vezir Ghiyath al-
Din who along with his brother were executed in 1336 (Morton [n.d]). In Baluchistan a mysterious saint called Pir Sultan is reported as providing holy protection and to have rendered innocuous all the snakes in the area (Tate 1909, 46). He is also said to have given his name to the great mountain Kuh-i-Sultan which is claimed to have engulfed the saint when he died (Tate 1909, 19). In raising such far-flung examples I mean only to suggest a degree of caution in establishing historical identity based on the construct of the mahlas.
Scholars who have asserted the identification of multiple Pir Sultan Abdals (Pir
Sultan Abdallar) such as İbrahim Aslanoğlu (1984) and Asım Bezirci (1994) construct their typologies of identity around the form of the mahlas name. I don‘t mean to suggest that their identification of distinct identities is based only on the name, since they use internal evidence of the lyrics that indicate locations and other associations – although their methods are not revealed in detail – however, the identities are established and grouped under forms of the name. For Aslanoğlu these are:
1. Pir Sultan 2. Pir Sultan Abdal 3. Pir Sultan‘ım Haydar 4. Pir Sultan Abdal (Halil İbrahim) 5. Abdal Pir Sultan
76 6. Pir Sultan Abdal (aruz şairi)
For Bezirci they are:
1. Pir Sultan 2. Pir Sultan‘ım Haydar 3. Abdal Pir Sultan 4. Pir Sultan Abdal (I) 5. Pir Sultan Abdal (II) 6. Pir Sultan Abdal (III) 7. Pir Sultan Abdal (IV) 8. İkinci (second) Pir Sultan
While these typologies do not categorise the identities under discrete mahlas forms –
Aslanoğlu has three Pir Sultan Abdals and Bezirci four as well as two Pir Sultans – it is the mahlas forms that identify the typologies based generally on three distinctions: the presence or not of ‗Abdal‘, the placement of ‗Abdal‘ before or after ‗Pir Sultan‘ and the presence of the additional name ‗Haydar‘.
It is not my purpose to analyse or specifically critique these typologies at length though scholars, notably Avcı (2006, 292f; 2004, 163f), have done so, noting among other things that the forms Pir Sultan and Pir Sultan Abdal appear in the early manuscripts of the Menâkıbu‟l-esrar behcetü‟l-ahrâr and the fact that the some deyiş appear in different sources with different mahlas forms, as indeed might be expected through the process of oral tradition. What in fact the typologies of Aslanoğlu and
Bezirci suggest is that that the mahlas should be understood as stable or fixed, a proposition that is not supported by the evidence from Yunus Emre to contemporary
77 aşık-s77. Ulusoy accounting for the distinction of the forms Pir Sultan and Pir Sultan
Abdal suggest that it may be that at different stages of his life he used a different form of the mahlas; or, perhaps more interestingly, that if the poems are connected with him or a statement belonging to him in the last verse he uses the form ‗Pir
Sultan Abdal‘ whereas if the poem invokes a wish from a higher authority he uses the form ‗Pir Sultan‘ (Ulusoy [n.d.], 157-158). Ulusoy‘s proposition also seems to suggest a certain stability and fixity of form for the mahlas that it would be hard to sustain; but more usefully Ulusoy identifies the mahlas as not merely a name or title but something that may function with subtly and meaning connected to beliefs expressed in the lyric.
The presence of ‗Abdal‘ is the most overt variation of the mahlas that distinguishes the proposed identities, whether it comes before or after the principal name content
‗Pir Sultan‘. Yet Abdal has a strong descriptive rather than nominal quality, designating a mystic, dervish or identification with the Abdals of Rum and in that sense is inherently an optional assertion. Moreover, it is a very common appellation among Sufi poets contemporary with Pir Sultan or earlier such as Kaygusuz Abdal,
Virani (whose works are attributed variously to Virani, Virani Abdal and Virani
Baba), Abdal Musa, Genç Abdal and Muhyeddin Abdal among a number of others.
Kaya lists twenty-nine poets using the ‗Abdal‘ mahlas78, nineteen of which he identified as appearing in cönk manuscripts held in villages in the Sivas, Divriği and
Zile region (Kaya 2004).
77 This will be discussed further in the section dealing with the mahlas in the Explications chapter below. 78 Kaya does distinguish Abdal Pir Sultan and Pir Sultan Abdal as distinct mahlas.
78 The identification as ‗Abdal‘ understood as a descriptive addition to the mahlas perhaps suggests the potential of the mahlas to assert inclusion through the introduction of an ambiguity – a distanciation – in the person of the lyric voice. It may imply, for example, that ‗I am Pir Sultan of the Abdal class‘; or, as others suggest, that it means ‗I am Pir Sultan‘s Abdal‘ – ―Pîr Sultan‟ın Abdalı olan ben‖
(Ulusoy [n.d.], 157). In the context that Ulusoy suggests, this does not necessarily mean a distinct poet is involved but rather it is a perspective of the lyric voice towards the persona evoked by the nominal aspect of the mahlas ‗Pir Sultan‘. Even from less subtle perspectives, ‗Abdal‘ suggests the presence of community, lineage and identification as a dervish, as in the final lines of the deyiş attributed to a son of
Pir Sultan called Pir Muhammed (elsewhere Pir Mehmet):
Abdal Pir Sultan‟ın Abdal oğluyum Adım Pir Muhammed Pirim Ali‟dir
I am Abdal Pir Sultan‘s abdal son My name is Pir Muhammad my Pir is Ali79
If indeed this is the voice of Pir Sultan‘s son – and irrespective of provable fact that is the implication of the deyiş80 – then it clearly expresses the descriptive and inclusive value of ‗Abdal‘ in respect to Pir Sultan. If it is not the voice of Pir Sultan‘s son the point still remains that the appellation has a fundamentally associative meaning.
79 The full text and translation can be found in the Translations chapter, section 5.6.1. 80 Aslanoğlu certainly disputes this attribution and attributes the deyiş to a later Pir Muhammed who lived in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and uses this lyric as evidence of Abdal Pir Sultan as a distinct and later identity than Pir Sultan (Aslanoğlu 19κ4, ι9-82).
79 Finally, on the matter of the mahlas forms associated with Pir Sultan Abdal, if we look at one deyiş, Uyur idik uyardılar, that appears in publication from many sources
– including the earliest publications – we can see the facility with which the mahlas may appear in different forms demonstrating the untenable perception of the mahlas as a stable or fixed integer. Aslanoğlu (1984, 379) reproduces the earliest source,
Derviş Ruhullah81, with the mahlas verse:
Pir Sultan Abdal‟ım şunda Çok keramet var insanda O cihanda bu cihanda Ali‟ye saydılar bizi
Ergun (1929, 40) has the same mahlas form although the verse continues differently:
Pir Sultan Abdal‟ım şunda Ulu divan sürür günde Pîrim şimdiki zamanda Ali‟ye kattılar bizi
In Besim Atalay‘s 1924 collection (Atalay 1991, 127) the mahlas form is different while the rest of the verse is the same as for Derviş Ruhullah:
Pir sultanım ne var şunda Çok keramet var insanda O cihanda bu cihanda Ali‟ye saydılar bizi
81 From his 1924 publication Bektaşi nefesleri.
80 In the collection published under the auspice of the Şahkulu Sultan Dergahı in
Istanbul (Pir Sultan Abdal divanı 1996, 186), the mahlas form is different again:
Pir Sultan‟ım Haydar şunda Çok keramet var insanda O cihanda bu cihanda Ali‟ye saydılar bizi
Bezirci (1994, 374)82 presents another variant of the mahlas line:
Pir Sultan‟ım eydür şunda Çok keramet var insanda O cihanda bu cihanda Ali‟ye saydılar bizi
Öztelli includes two versions, the first with the mahlas line Pir Sultan‟ım Haydar
şunda (Öztelli 1971, lxix) and the second, included among the example lyrics with musical notation derived from Vahit Dede, with the mahlas line Pir Sultan‟ım eder
şunda (Öztelli 1971, musical example 22). This would appear to be the form prevalent in the Istanbul and Balkan Bektaşi tradition as the same form is given in a version from musicologist Rauf Yekta‘s publication from 1930s, Bektaşi Nefesleri, reproduced by Gölpınarlı (1992, 287) and in the collection of Bektaşi nefes compiled and published by Koca and Onaran (1987, 42).
It is perhaps all the more remarkable that these variations occur in a lyric of only eight syllable lines where less room for variation might be expected than in the
82 Avcı (2006, 513) publishes the same form with the slight variation in the spelling with eydur rather than eydür.
81 longer eleven syllable koşma form. Unless one allows that the expression of the mahlas is not necessarily fixed but that it is subject to variation, and ultimately interpretation, then the conclusion must be that some versions are erroneous, a conclusion inherent in the arguments based on the stability of the mahlas form yet contrary to the essential orality of the deyiş and its manner of transmission.
2.3.6 Themes and subjects
As is evident from the my concentration on aspects of Pir Sultan Abdal‘s identity and legend, many of the songs attributed to him concern the events of his life and his connection to the kızılbaş and Safavid Shahs. However, the thematic centre of Pir
Sultan‘s deyişler is Alevi belief (inanç) as expressed most importantly through the primacy of the Imam Ali. Kaya established from an analysis of 400 texts that around
75 percent of them refer either explicitly or covertly to Allah, Muhammad, Ali,
Husayn or other Alevi-Bektaşi identities (Kaya 1999, 47, 55). The lyric voice that expresses this belief is that of the fervent dervish, vowed to follow the truth path, in pursuit of his master (Pir) and esoteric understanding (batıni). This is the persona that emerges from the lyrics form the earliest source the Menâkıbu‟l-esrâr behcetü‟l- ahrâr83.
Benim pîrim Şah-ı Merdân Ali‟dir Selâmını göndür bedr-i sabahdan Ben tâlibim ne haddim var pîr olam Pîre duâcıyım her gün sabahdan
My master is Ali, Shah of the Seven Guides
83 Three lyrics identified as appearing in early copies of the Menâkıbu‟l-esrâr behcetü‟l-ahrâr from which these verses are taken are included in the Translations chapter; see sections 5.5.4, 5.5.42 and 5.5.25.
82 Send him your greetings by the moon at dawn I am a seeker, how could I dare to be a master I pray to the master every day in the morning …
Uyan bu gaflet hâbından İsbat isterler bâtından Her aşıka sohbetinden İkrar ile yol isterler
Awake from this somnolent stupor They require proof of the inner person For every dervish, from his meeting, They require declaration of the way … Gelsin ikrarına beli diyenler İniltim derdim Muhammed Ali‟dir İsmin anınca salavât verenler Meşrebim virdim Muhammed Ali‟dir
Let those who affirm their vows come My moan of suffering is for Muhammad Ali They give invocation mentioning the name My disposition my recitation is for Muhammad Ali
The themes of resistance, asserting the true path and ultimately the climax of martyrdom are also prominent. Pir Sultan views his own fate as a direct line of martyrdom from the Imam Husayn through to the Hurufi batıni (esoteric) poet
Seyyid Nesimi84 (whose own martyrdom was connected to his sympathy for Mansūr
84 Özmen (1998, 249-396) includes a usefully substantial collection of Nesimi‘s poems and detail about his life. See also Kaygusuz (2005, 256-278).
83 al-Hall j martyred for his assertion of an ‟l-Haqq – Turkish enel Hak – ‗I am
God‘85). So Pir Sultan sings:
Üçüncü ölmem bu hain Pir Sultan ölür dirilir
This treachery is my third dying Pir Sultan dies and returns to life …
Pir Sultan Abdal‟ım Seyyid Nesimi Şu âleme destan ettin sesimi
I am Pir Sultan Abdal, Seyyid Nesimi You made my voice the story for this world ...
Çeke çeke ben bu dertten ölürüm Seversen Ali‟yi değme yarama Ali‟nin yoluna serim veririm Serversen Ali‟yi değme yarama
Ever enduring I die from this malady If you love Ali don‘t touch my wound I devote myself to the way of Ali If you love Ali don‘t touch my wound …
Pir Sultan‟ım Haydar Nesimî‟yiz Tâ ezelden Şah‟a kurban serimiz On İki İmamlar dâr meydanımız Biz şehidiz Ali‟dir serdârımız
85 About Mansūr al-Hall j and an ‟l-Haqq see Schimmel (1975).
84
I am Pir Sultan, Haydar, we are Nesimi Even from eternity we are given to the Shah The Twelve Imams is our dwelling place We are martyrs and Ali our commander
Pir Sultan‘s verse is robust and expresses the esoteric and heterodox beliefs emanating from the time when Alevi-Bektaşi identity was coalescing from out of the antinomian Anatolian dervish groups of the sixteenth century (Karamustafa 1993;
1994, 83f). It also reflects a response to times of social and political unrest as the
Ottoman government asserted its authority in Anatolia in the face of the new threat posed by the Safavid rulers in Iran86. At times the voice of the suppliant dervish turns to an ecstatic vehemence as in the deyiş beginning Hazret-i Ali‟nin devri yürür (May the time of Lord Ali advance)87:
Çağırırlar filân oğlu filâna Ne itibar Yezid kavli yalana Kılıcın Arş‟tadır doğru gelene Ya ser verip ya ser alınmalıdır
They call out such and such to the sons of so and so What regard is due the word of the lying Yezid His sword raised on high at the one advancing The head must be devoted or seized
Pir Sultan Abdal‘s manner of defiance is expressed in hope of the coming of the
Shah, a figure that can be understood both as the temporal Safavid rule – the figurehead of opposition to the Ottoman ruler – and as the coming order of those of
86 Barkey (1994, 2008) and Faroqhi (1995) are particularly useful on the issue of social unrest in Anatolia and the administrative response to it. 87 The full text and translation can be found in the Translations chapter, section 5.5.29.
85 true belief, the ehlibeyt, most particularly in the person of the Imam Ali. The great optative lyric Haktan inayet olursa is a litany of such hope:
Haktan inayet olursa Şah Uruma gele bir gün
By the grace of God May the Shah come to Rum one day … Çeke sancağı götüre Şah İstanbula otura
May they raise and bear the banner May the Shah sit in Istanbul … Pir Sultan‟ın işi ahtır İntizarım güzel Şah‟tır Mülk iyesi padişahtır Mülke sahib ola bir gün
Pir Sultan‘s work is but a sigh I am in expectation of the beautiful Shah The administration that is sovereign May he be its master one day
One of the most engaging and significant aspects of Pir Sultan‘s verse is the manner in which he imbues these themes with references that evoke a sense of the Anatolian landscape, the real world of places and the resonances of the seasons; a factor that plays a part in connecting his verse intimately with the people.
Bahar oldu otlar bitti güz geldi
86 On‟ki İmam‟lara giden turnalar
Spring is done, the grass gone, Autumn come The red cranes are going to the Twelve Imams ...
Abdal olup dağdan dağa dolandım Aştığım bellere göç eylemişim Kızıl ırmakları bulandırınca Kayalı göllere göç eylemişim
I wandered as a dervish from mountain to mountain I migrated to mountain passes that I went beyond When the waters of the Red River were churned to mud I migrated to the rocky lakes ...
Bu yıl bu dağların karı erimez Eser bâd-ı sâbah yel bozuk bozuk Türkmen kalkıp yaylasına yürümez Yıkılmış aşiret il bozuk bozuk
The snow doesn‘t melt on the mountains this year The morning breeze blows an ill wind of ruin The Turkmen no longer start out for the highlands The nomads have cleared off and the land is in ruin
… El ettiler turnalara kazlara Dağlar yeşillendi döndü yazlara Çiğdemler takınsın söyle kızlara Niçin gitmez Yıldız-Dağı dumanın
They signal to the red cranes and the falcons
87 The mountains are turned green for the new seasons Let the crocus be worn; speak to the young girls Star Mountain, why does your mist not leave?
This lived world, the connection to seasons and place, as expressed through the verse suggests a plausible sound oral ‗chain of transmission‘ (Vansina 1985, 29) and the strong possibility that we have to a large extent an authentic voice in the deyiş of Pir
Sultan. This is not to assert that this is an individual voice or authorship, but rather that the texts have been maintained, formed, phrased and supplemented following these central themes with considerable authenticity and integrity through successive generations of performance.
The memory, or expressed idea, of actual events is present but ambiguous, for the most part, suggesting the meaning of such events rather than retention of reportage.
The historical construction of the lyrics and the persona of Pir Sultan Abdal evidently arise from the world of Ottoman-Safavid conflict in sixteenth century Anatolia but this is imagined in the oral lyric tradition to express the importance of integrity, commitment and hope. So, as I have suggested earlier, the circumstance of probable historical event and detail is distilled into the personal conflict of Pir Sultan Abdal and Hızır Paşa that the songs express. Pir Sultan Abdal‘s voice is certainly a voice of challenge to authority constructed from historical circumstance, but it is more refined and deeply felt than the expression of a political ideology as some might glibly suggest88. Pir Sultan Abdal has surely engaged the imagination of Alevis over centuries and developed a corpus of orally sustained deyiş that extends beyond the
88 Even a knowledgeable scholar engaged with Alevi music such as Bates can still reduce a characterisation of Pir Sultan to irrelevent cliché in discussing contemporary aşık-s who ―sing of the life history and political ideology of Pir Sultan Abdal … rural Anatolia‘s ‗Robin Hood‘, who fought against authoritarianism and was ultimately hung for his resistance‖ (Bates 2011, 7).
88 forms for ritual devotion – and so in later times engaged wider communities of interest – because the persona and his exemplary story is received as a universal truth, the confession of a moral community and the harbinger of hope.
Pir Sultan Abdal‟im bu sözüm haktır Vallâhi sözümün hatası yoktur Şimdiki sofunun yezidi çoktur Ali‟m ne yatarsın günlerin geldi
I am Pir Sultan Abdal this word of mine is true I swear to God there is no lie in my word Nowadays the deceitful dervishes are many My Ali, why are you idle, your time has come89
2.4 The case of Kul Himmet and ‘üstadım’
Kul Himmet like Pir Sultan Abdal is counted among the seven great poets of Alevi-
Bektaşi tradition and chronologically stands as the latest of the seven being active, most plausibly, in the second half of the sixteenth and perhaps in the early part of the seventeenth century90. Like Pir Sultan Abdal there is no documentary evidence of his actual identity and even less about his putative life and activity can be drawn from
89 The full text and translation can be found in the Translations chapter, section 5.5.26. 90 Aslanoğlu (1997a, 4) makes the observation that Kul Himmet was living when the Menâkıbu‟l- esrâr behcetü‟l-ahrâr (the büyük buyruk of Bisâti) was written, that is around 1576. Öztelli also uses the evidence of the Menâkıb to determine that the Kul Himmet like the other poets included in the buyruk lived in the sixteenth or early seventeenth century. (Öztelli 1996, 15). There are no lyrics with the mahlas of Kul Himmet in the edition of Bisâti‘s Menâkıb edited by Taşğın based on a copy from around 1612-1613 (Bisatî 2003) however Gölpınarlı says that Bisâti‘s Menâkıb includes four nefes while there were twenty attributed to Hatayi, three to Pir Sultan and one each to Kul Adil, Kul Maslum and Şah Adil (Gölpınarlı 200ι, 178). So while Hatayi stands out as the principal voice Kul Himmet appears on an equal footing with Pir Sultan. The common epithet of ‗Kul‘ among the included poets is also of some interest. Gölpınarlı includes three of the four Kul Himmet nefes from the Menâkıb in his book Alevi Bektaşi nefesleri (Gölpınarlı 1992, 32-33; 138-139; 192-194). Gölpınarlı does not give any detail about the provenance of his manuscript source other than to say it was a copy made around 1608-1609 (1017 hicrî) (Gölpınarlı 200ι, 654). Sadettin Nüzhet earlier mentions the presence of Kul Himmet lyrics being among the nefes in the Menâkıb and other mecmua (Ergun 1929, 2).
89 the lyrics attributed to him. Both Öztelli and Aslanoğlu report evidence of his memory in the traditions of the village of Gürümlü (formerly known as Varzıl) in the vicinity of Almus in the region of Tokat (that is to the northern side of Yıldız Dağı).
During their visits to the village made separately by Öztelli and Aslanoğlu they received reports of cönk held in the village containing nefes by Kul Himmet, though some of the villagers were rather coy about revealing them. In the centre of the village is the presumed tomb of Kul Himmet with an inscription identifying it as being constructed in 195891. He is generally understood to have been an associate and mürid (disciple) of Pir Sultan; and so a contemporary or younger contemporary of Pir Sultan (Öztelli 1996, 45-4ι; Aslanoğlu 199ιa, 11-17). From the evidence of the lyrics he also appears to have been educated and proud to state it:
Kul Himmet‟im okur yazar (Aslanoğlu 199ιa, 1ι4)
I am Kul Himmet one who reads and writes
Kul Himmet‟im okur, asıl gelirim (Öztelli 1996, 97)
I am Kul Himmet one who reads, I come as genuine
Gölpınarlı includes Kul Himmet along with Pir Sultan as the two greatest lyric poets in Alevi-Bektaşi literature (Gölpınarlı and Boratav 1943, 19). Hatâyi, Pir Sultan and
Kul Himmet together form the foundational triumvirate voice of Alevi lyrical
91 The most substantial works dealing with Kul Himmet are Aslanoğlu (1997a) and Öztelli (1996). Important earlier publications that include Kul Himmet lyrics are those by Atalay (1991) and Gölpınarlı (1963; 1953a).
90 expression and the model for the aşık-s that came after as can be seen expressed in a lyric attributed to Kalender Abdal92:
Kalender, yok bu sözümün hatâsı Beş harftendir âşıkların futası Üç aşıkdır cümle âşık atası Hatâyi, Kul Himmet, Pir Sultan geldi (Öztelli 1996, 28-29)
Kalender, my word has no error The apron of the aşık-s is of five letters Three aşık-s come as ancestors of all aşık Hatayi, Kul Himmet, Pir Sultan
Kul Himmet himself was the mürşid (teacher and guide) of another significant poet of Alevi ritual lyrics, Kul Hüseyin93 demonstrating the establishing of links and momentun of authority from seminal poets represented in the Menakıb within the ritual tradition.
Kul Himmet‘s lyrics show similarity in the themes relating to belief and ritual function to Hatayi and Pir Sultan indicating the influence of those poets or the common historical constructions from which they emerge – the coalescing of kızılbaş identity around the expressive charisma of Alid and ehlibeyt Shi-ism. It is not altogether remarkable that lyrics are found in the cönk and mecmua collections
92 Öztelli attributes the lyric to Kalender Abdal who he says was active in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century (Öztelli 1996, 28), thus making him a contemporary of Kul Himmet. The identity of Kalender Abdal is, however, confused. Some associate this poet with Kalender Çelebi (Özmen 1998: 2, 23f) who lived in the early sixteenth century making this attribution anachronous. More likely the Kalender Abdal associated with this lyric is the same poet to which the renowned lyric ‗Dün gece seyrimde seyrim içinde‘ is attributed, for which see Başgöz (1967: 9-10); and whom Doğan Kaya speculates lived at the latest up until the nineteenth century (Kaya 2004). 93 On Kul Hüseyin see Öztelli (1996) and Özmen (1998: 2, 325-344).
91 sometimes attributed to Kul Himmet and sometimes to Pir Sultan or Hatayi. There is a prevalence of Alevi-Bektaşi themes in Kul Himmet‘s lyrics and, as Öztelli (1996,
43) observes, this is common to all these ozan-s (aşık-s) and so it is little surprise that the attribution of lyrics is adaptable or not completely fixed. While ostensible confusion in attribution is commonly represented as a matter of error or ignorance, and may be so, it may be more instructive to see this, whether by intent or error, as demonstrative of a functional strength of the oral traditional form in allowing an expansive approach to the traditional lyric that permits the interpretive potential of attribution. Understood in the terms of DuBois‘s (2006) associative axis the lyric is made meaningful through the act of attribution. In the common or variable (even strictly erroneous) attributions among Hatayi, Pir Sultan and Kul Himmet we may witness the working through and affirmation of authority and permeable personas.
Indeed plausible adaptable attribution may be understood as a way that connections, associations and communities of authority are strengthened and sustained by those working in or being part of the traditional culture.
2.4.1 Kul Himmet Üstadım
As a seminal poet of ritual and didactic lyric it not surprising that, as for Pir Sultan and Hatayi, there should also be a tradition of appropriation and reworking of the Kul
Himmet identity. The multiple identities seemingly forming the received poetic persona of Kul Himmet as an issue is again raised by the late and renowned Sivas folklorist İbrahim Aslanoğlu. The issue focuses on the identity associated with those lyrics with a mahlas form ‗Kul Himmet Üstadım‘. The issue is particularly of interest, perhaps, since this identity is attributed to one of the most outstanding and,
92 since the early 1980s when a shortened version was recorded by Arif Sağ94, most widely performed and recorded, tevhid duaz lyrics (and an outstanding example of a series of quatrains in mani form) beginning:
Bugün bize pir geldi Gülleri taze geldi Ünü sıra kanberle Ali murtaza geldi (Atalay 1991, 165)
Today the Pir came to us Fresh came his roses Ali Murtaza came with Kamber his groom before him95
This lyric appears among the earliest publications of Alevi Bektaşi lyrics sourced from cönk and mecmua in the early years of the twentieth century. Its earliest publication is in Besim Atalay where the mahlas verse is given as:
Kul Himmet üstadımız Bunda yoktur yadımız Şah Merdan aşkına96 Hak vere muradımız (Atalay 1991, 167)
94 Sağ recorded the first five verses of the tevhid on his 1983 recording İnsan Olmaya Geldim (Sağ 1983) and continued with another five verses on his next solo recording Halay (Sağ 19κκ). Neither recording included the mahlas verse. Many popular performers subsequently recorded the song including Özlem Özgür, the Akbaba duo, İbrahim Tatlıses, Nuray Hafiftaş and Sabahat Akkiraz. 95 The full text and translation can be found in the Translations chapter, section 5.8.3. 96 This line as it appears in the modern Turkish version prepared by Vedat Atila is actually short one syllable as it omits the izafet construction and should more logically read Şah-ı Merdan aşkına as in later published versions. In the original Ottoman script publication of Atalay‘s book (Atalay 1340 مرداﻥ :this construction reads ([108] ,(1924)
93 Kul Himmet our master We are not strangers here For the love of Ali of the Seven Guides Our hope is that God may deliver
Aslanoğlu‘s version follows Atalay quite closely while including an apostrophe to emphasise the form üstadım as a construction of the mahlas and the ‗ız‘ as the suffixed third person verb – as well as capitalising it – thus making the line ―Kul
Himmet Üstadım‟ız‖ (we are Kul Himmet Üstadım) and not allowing the reading and interpretation, possible in Atalay, of ―Kul Himmet our master‖. In the original publication in Ottoman script Atalay identifies the mahlas as Kul Himmet not Kul
Himmet Üstadım using the convention of containing the mahlas in square brackets97.
Kul Himmet Üstadım‟ız Onda yoktur yadımız Şahı Merdan aşkına Hak vere muradımız (Aslanoğlu 1995, 126)
We are Kul Himmet Üstadım We are not strangers there For the love of Ali of the Seven Guides Our hope is that God may deliver
97 This convention is not used in modern collections in Latin script although italics or bold type is ﻗﻭﻝ ﮪﻩﺖ sometimes used to highlight the mahlas. The mahlas Atalay contains within brackets is (Atalay 1340 (1924), [108]) as the image below, taken from Atalay‘s book, shows.
94 Öztelli writes that he has found as many as a hundred mani lyrics for Kul Himmet in the cönk manuscripts (Öztelli 1996, 175) – that is a hundred or so four line verses in this meter (not entire lyrics) and these are connected by the relation of the last line of the preceding verse with the first line of the following verse. In the version of the line of mani constituting the duaz tevhid given by Öztelli the mahlas is Kul Himmet not
Kul Himmet Üstadım but, significantly, the concept of üstad (master) is retained in the mani in the second line and would appear to refer to one he understands as master
– this being Imam Ali who is mentioned in the subsequent line as Şah-ı Merdan or perhaps even his spiritual guides Pir Sultan or Şah Hatayi.
Kul Himmet‟in yâdı ne Dilek diler üstadına Şah-ı Merdan aşkına Mevlâm ver muradımı (Öztelli 1996, 179)
What does Kul Himmet mention He longs for his master For the love of Ali of the Seven Guides Lord, grant my desire
What is instructive is the reworking of words that suggest the force of conceptual metonyms in different ways within such a succinct form. It is not the rendering of historical certainty (or uncertainty) but the discharge of expressive and interpretive possiblity that that is revealed. Variation in the form neither proves nor disproves any eponymous identity but does hint at the more important characteristic of the metonymic resiliance of the persona abetted by an adaptable or malleable mahlas form. So Kul Himmet in the mahlas verse is associated with the concept of master
95 (üstad) and this may be interpreted as an intrinsic part of the persona or even as the evidence of the work of later devotees (or scholarly interpreters).
2.4.2 Fleshing out the persona: Aşık İbrahim and Hacik Kız
Aslanoğlu (1997a, 7-9) identifies the principal identity of Kul Himmet Üstadım as living in the second part of the eighteenth century and first half of the nineteenth. He is identified as Aşık İbrahim of the Öksüzoğulları from Örenik village in the
Karageban area of the region of Divriği. Aslanoğlu makes this identification on the basis of registers (defter) of the population for Divriği. Aslanoğlu states that while
Aşık İbrahim‘s name does not actually appear in an 1κ44 register his son‘s, Hasan, does with his age being given as being sixty-five years old. Aslanoğlu calculates that if Hasan is sixty-five years old in 1844 he must have been born in 1779 and makes the assumption that if Kul Himmet Üstadım was around thirty years old when Hasan was born his year of birth would be around 1749.
Aslanoğlu makes his identification of Aşık İbrahim as the identity of Kul Himmet
Üstadım from the internal evidence of the lyrics, most particularly on a reference to
Aşık İbrahim in the opening line of one deyiş; and also because of references to contemporary poets and locations in the Divriği region. One deyiş bearing the Kul
Himmet Üstadım mahlas begins:
Âşık İbrahim de bir mâ‟na söyler Ben gidersem ismim kala dillerde Âşıklar derdinin dermanın söyler Ben gidersem imim kala dillerde (Aslanoğlu 1995, 36)
96
Aşık İbrahim speaks of a truth If I go let my name remain on the tongues Aşık-s speak of sorrow‘s remedy If I go let my name remain on the tongues
Aslanoğlu suggests that the aşık introduces his name with a master (usta or üstad) to establish his own self; that, together with the name in the final quatrain (the mahlas quatrain), his name will also be remembered. This is a case of the aşık introducing his name with the master‘s seemingly outside and even dubitable to the functional meaning of the mahlas. In time and in other places the poems became mixed up with
Kul Himmet and so Kul Himmet Üstadım was forgotten as a separate personality
(Aslanoğlu 1995, 11). This would logically and plausibly seem true enough; however it also seems to be an overly simplistic explanation and dubious strategy (or a significant misjudgement on the part of aşık) since, as Aslanoğlu implies, Aşık
İbrahim‘s Kul Himmet Üstadım identity was subsumed into that of Kul Himmet so the aşık‘s name and individual identity survived precariously at best.
Oztelli suggests that Kul Himmet Üstadım was so devoted to Kul Himmet that he remembered his master in every poem by adding üstadım to the name (Öztelli 1996,
48). As Aslanoğlu and Öztelli both note, the nineteenth century Sivas aşık Fakir
Edna used the same device to express his devotion to Hatayi. Interestingly, however, the example verse given by Öztelli gives üstadım in the grammatically qualifying position preceding the name, that is ―üstadım Hatayi kurdu bu yolu‖98, which can be understood to mean ‗my master Hatayi established this way‖, and not in the more
98 The full verse reads: ―Fakir Edna‟m, Hak‟tan doldu bu dolu / Üstadım Hatâyî kurdu bu yolu / Binbir ismi vardır, bir ismi Ali / Binbir ismi ile gelen Ali‟dir‖ (Öztelli 1996, 48).
97 grammatically ambiguous post-position in which üstadım appears in the Kul Himmet
Üstadım mahlas.
The suggestion of the meaning for the mahlas Kul Himmet Üstadım proposed by
Aslanoğlu and Öztelli is that üstadım is a possessive construction – which is certainly unusual in respect to the mahlas. Even in the verse of Fakir Edna given as supporting evidence by Öztelli the use of üstadım is clearly adjectival and is presented as relating to the mahlas itself, and seems a rather unexceptional example of a convention of evoking the name of and devotion to the path or way of the great Alevi masters such as Hatayi and Pir Sultan. The postpositional ‗ım‘ (as in üstadım) can be understood as either the first person possessive or as the first person verb ‗to be‘. In reference to the convention of the mahlas as being fundamentally a device of attribution99, it is always understood as the latter – an assertion of the poetic persona.
The suggestion here is perhaps that the sense of any grammatical meaning has to be lost and that üstadım becomes merely part of the pronominal Kul Himmet Üstadım.
Yet it is instructive that the mahlas form ‗Pir Sultan Abdalım‘ is never considered in the same way but rather as the assertion of the persona ‗Pir Sultan Abdal‘ as in ‗I am
Pir Sultan Abdal‘100. In other words, why do we need to consider this mahlas as evidence of a separate identity rather than just as an epithet added to the mahlas in some lyrics, and as Abdal(ım) may be added to Pir Sultan, why not Üstad(ım) to Kul
Himmet? The answer is of course we do not unless the purpose is to uncover evidence for locating the creative identities responsible for the lyrics. Yet this does not seem to be the expressive purpose of this mahlas persona. While it may well
99 He I emphasise attribution is not simply synonymous with authorship – though it can mean that too – but also attribution to an implied poetic persona or authority. 100 This point may be supported by an alternative form of the mahlas that has the descriptive abdal preceding Abdal Pir Sultan‘ım – I am (the) Abdal Pir Sultan.
98 have derived from an individual who perceived himself in the tradition of his
‗master‘, his choice of mahlas has the inherent ambiguity to devolve the lyrics into his master‘s persona albeit retaining a distinct form that overtly expresses the fundamental metonymy to be understood in respect to the mahlas Kul Himmet – that of ‗master‘.
Aslanoğlu builds his evidence for a later distinct identity for Kul Himmet Üstadım observing that in another deyiş Kul Himmet Üstadım mentions Aşıkî, a poet from
Arguvan understood to have lived between 1763 and 1821101 and who spent time with his şeyh102 Derviş Muhammed in the village of Anzahar in the Divriği region.
Aslanoğlu also highlights the references in a number of deyiş to locations in the
Karageban region of Divriği such as Sultan Oyuk and Sağrı Çamlık (Aslanoğlu 1995,
8).
Öztelli claims to have originally opposed Aslanoğlu‘s view and believed Kul
Himmet Üstadım was Kul Himmet until he himself came across a lyric he describes as a ‗documentary poem‘ (―belgesel nefes”) (Öztelli 1996, 48-50) which reveals two indentities and which concludes with the mahlas verse:
Kul Himmet Üstadım, cemâlin cennet Şol iki cihan severi Muhammed Bin bir ismi vardır, bir ismi Himmet Anın içün arzumanım Kul Himmet (Öztelli 1996, 50)
101 Özmen gives the date of death as 1824 (Özmen 1998: 4, 47-74). 102 Sheikh. The head of a dervish order.
99 Kul Himmet Üstadım103, your beauty is paradise Muhammad loves the streams of the here and after There are a thousand and one names, one name is Himmet My desire is for him104, Kul Himmet
In this lyric Öztelli sees the evidence of Kul Himmet Üstadım‘s great love for Kul
Himmet. Indeed the lyric throughout repeats the refrain “anın içün arzumanım Kul
Himmet” (my desire is for him Kul Himmet) and a reference to Teslim Abdal
(alongside Hatayi and Pir Sultan) an aşık who it is supposed lived after Kul Himmet would seem to support Öztelli‘s view. Öztelli does rely on the narrative coherence and logic of the lyric and especially the final mahlas verse, however evidence of
Alevi deyiş, particularly in respect to the mahlas verse, might also suggest caution in relying on a narrative reading and the consistency of grammatical person markers
(suffixes of the verb ‗to be‘). One of the characteristics of the mahlas, and a central proposition of my thesis, is its meaningful ambiguity – by which I mean it is through the permitted ambiguity in the rhetoric of the lyric that meaning (interpretation) can take place. So, I would contend that in this lyric it is not necessary to look for the logical distinction of two identities in the lyric personas – though it is certainly a possible and valid perspective – but that other ways of meaning are possible. It could be interpreted that Kul Himmet addresses himself in the mahlas verse through the very meaning of his mahlas105. From this perspective a possible reading is that Kul
Himmet speaks of himself as master (üstadım = I am master) in the first person then changes grammatical person to say ‗your aspect is as paradise‘ – such a shift in
103 Following my earlier argument, this could also be read as ‗I am Kul Himmet master‘ following the common practice of including the first person verb ‗to be‘ in the mahlas. 104 Or ‗for this‘. 105 A device employed by many aşık-s from Hatayi to Sıdkı Baba to Dertli Divani which will be discussed further in the next chapter.
100 grammatical person is common in Alevi deyiş106. He then speaks of the ‗thousand and one names‘ of which one is ‗himmet‘ which literally evokes the idea of ‗zeal‘ or
‗endeavour‘ or ‗moral influence‘; and then the poet, that is Kul Himmet (literally
‗servant [or slave] of endeavour‘), says it is for ‗this‘ he desires; that is he desires to be the essence of Kul Himmet, to achieve what his persona, as expressed in his mahlas, means.
Somewhat surprisingly, Aslanoğlu having determined Aşık İbrahim as the principal identity of Kul Himmet Üstadım, then proposes a second Kul Himmet Üstadım, a girl named Hacik Kız (Hatice) who lived in the nineteenth century in Örenik in the
Divriği region. This second Kul Himmet Üstadım accounts for the mention of a precise date of 1277 ( i.e. 1860 CE) in one deyiş. Since this date post-dates Aşık
İbrahim it becomes a problematic attribution to him. Aslanoğlu quotes local legend that says one day the villagers of Örenik asked Kul Himmet Üstadım (that is, Aşık
İbrahim) ―Aşık, after you is there nobody to attain and hold your place?‖ To which he replied ―Don‘t be anxious, when I die a girl will be born who will sing nefesler with my name‖ (Aslanoğlu 199ιa, 10). So, Aslanoğlu locates a second Kul Himmet
Üstadım that is directly connected to the first. Irrespective of the veracity of the claims of identity, the importance of linkage (lineage), continuity and authority is evident in such accounts – indeed this is perhaps the most important function to be understood by such accounts.
If we accept as plausible the veracity of the proposed Kul Himmet Üstadım identities, we may also see this as the process of the tradition revealed in practice.
106 This ‗shiftiness' in grammatical person, which is a common characteristic of the deyiş lyric, particularly in the mahlas verse, will be discussed further in the next chapter.
101 Aşık Ibrahim is one inspired to follow Kul Himmet as his master (üstadım) precisely as a way of connecting to the tradition and community – of asserting his participation in the tradition and his contribution to its continuity. He may assert his own identity to some degree and indeed may desire its memory, but his success and the success of the tradition in this approach is that his work was (or may have been) accepted and contributed to the vitality of the Kul Himmet tradition. Local tradition may retain the memory of notable individuals who animate and create the tradition, but their success depends upon their place in the larger tradition to which they look. It is the forces of coherency and authority that the great personas, such as Kul Himmet and Pir Sultan and Hatayi, exert that sustain this process. One reason Alevi lyric represents such a substantial expressive tradition is the tension between the structurally coalescing and sustaining and authorising forces and the local, communal and individually creative forces that re-interpret, invent and contribute. Within this creative tension identities emerge, establish personas, coalesce under the force of persona or become obscure.
It is not my intention to try disprove the identities proposed by Aslanoğlu – not the least because much of my argument is that this is ultimately of limited value at least for my purpose in understanding the expressive implications of the mahlas persona and how it means. The evidence of the lyrics suggests the limits of the task. What can we understand, for example, from this lyric in which the central concept of master
‗üstad‘ is associated with Pir Sultan.
Eydür Kul Himmet, üstadım Pir Sultan Hem Küçük Yatağan, Büyük Yatağan Erenler cellâdı yâ Hacım Sultan Zâhirde, bâtında sen imdat eyle (Öztelli 1996, 96)
102
So says Kul Himmet, my master is Pir Sultan Both Little Yatağan and Big Yatağan Dervishes‘ scourge Hacım Sultan In word and deed, in the inner man, may you give help107
This mahlas line states (following Öztelli‘s editorial punctuation) ―Kul Himmet says, my master is Pir Sultan‖ although it could conceivably mean ―Kul Himmet speaks, I am the master Pir Sultan‖. However, if we remove the editorial comma, a reading such as ―Kul Himmet Üstadım speaks of Pir Sultan‖ is possible. Here we have the term ‗üstadım‘ associated with Kul Himmet in, at the very least, an ambiguous context though one that more persuasively speaks of his ‗master‘ as being Pir
Sultan108 and an assertion of authoritative lineage.
Finally, the comments of Ali Celalettin Ulusoy ([n.d.], 199) in respect to the issue of
Kul Himmet Üstadım are instructive. Ulusoy is a çelebi (a claim of descent from
Hacı Bektaş) and someone whose views can be understood to carry particular interest in regards to Alevi-Bektaşi expression. In his work Yedi ulu‟lar, Ulusoy provides only a very brief introduction to the lyrics works of Kul Himmet that he includes, only amounting to one page but half of this is given over to the issue of the identity of Kul Himmet and Kul Himmet Üstadım. Ulusoy notes a verse mentioning ‗Pirim
107 The full text and translation of this deyiş can be found in the Translations chapter, section 5.8.2. 108 See also this mahlas verse included by Aslanoğlu (1995, 107) as a Kul Himmet Üstadım lyric that clearly evokes Pir Sultan and indeed his locale of Banaz and Yıldız(eli) which seems at odds with the assertion of the Aşık İbrahim identity. Again, the reading can be ambiguous in respect to üstadım, either as the name Kul Himmet Üstadım or as ―Kul Himmet my master reluctant Pir Sultan‖:
Kul Himmet Üstadım Pir Sultan nazlı Kul Himmet Üstadım reluctant Pir Sultan Yıldız‟dır yaylası köyü Banazlı Yildiz is his land Banaz his village Bir pınar akıyor oniki gözlü A source flows the twelve discerning ones Suyu abı zemzem der Hacı Bektaş Hacı Bektaş speaks of the abundance of the source
103 Feyzullah‘ whom Ulusoy identifies as Feyzullah Çelebi who lived between 1711-
1759, and on this basis agrees it would be necessary to understand that the ozan with the mahlas Kul Himmet Üstadım lived in the eighteenth century. Ulusoy also states that it can be thought that poems with the mahlas Kul Himmet Üstadım belong to a poet who accepted the sixteenth century Kul Himmet as his master (ustad/üstad) but points out that up to now no documents have been come upon to confirm this for certain. Ulusoy suggests that a harmony with Kul Himmet can be seen in the Kul
Himmet Üstadım poems in terms of characteristics and manner, such as his love for
Ali and Hacı Bektaş Veli and also a didactic quality. Ulusoy concludes however that until at least conclusive documents come to hand, the most realistic approach is to accept they belong to Kul Himmet and he makes no distinction in the collection of lyrics he presents. Ulusoy points out that in this literature all the great poets are copied and in time these poems get mixed up and it becomes impossible to try to distinguish them in time. Ulusoy‘s comments and approach to the issue are interesting. He does not attempt to argue against the possibility of Kul Himmet
Üstadım as a distinct individual but that the logical approach, pending substantive evidence, is that we accept no distinction – in other words the challenge of authorial identities does not affect the attributive function evoked in the mahlas names of the didactic authority of the works and the suitability of their content to a master persona understand as Kul Himmet. This should be understood as a valid and not a contradictory position as it reflects the essential qualities, their genesis as historical creations and individual interpretations, but also the social maintenence of the function of the lyrics in Alevi ritual and belief culture. Ulusoy seems, as a scholar, to take an interest in the issue and must address it (but is wise to the need for rigorous proof) while at the same time seems dismissive of it to the extent that it is hardly
104 relevent; or at least finds no difficulty in accomodating authorial ambiguity when it does not compromise the meaning and function of the lyric. It certainly does not have a bearing on how we should approach Kul Himmet and the substance of the works bearing or reflecting his mahlas, indeed as Ulusoy makes clear the lyrics of Kul
Himmet Üstadım are functionally indistinguishable from Kul Himmet and issues of historical identity do not disturb that foundation.
My purpose here is not to pursue or suggest any answer to the veracity of identities, rather to illustrate the nuances that the lyrics suggest in the expression of these identities. The veracity to be found in the identities is in their inclusion in the community of authority which pivots on and is expressed in ambiguous simplicity – and consequently with great interpretive potential – in the mahlas. The mahlas expresses the veracity of the authoritative identity within the tradition but of course it is real, flesh and blood, individuals that interpret and re-create the expression of these personas.
This discussion of Kul Himmet Üstadım also aims to illustrate how the scholarly attention, particularly from folklorists and literary historians reveal, through their activities, that the centrality of persona manifested in the self-naming convention is the ontological pivot of this expressive culture and the epistemological key. The objectives (and conclusions) of the attention given by scholars such as Aslanoğlu in seeking to disentangle authorial identity from the constellation of personas in the
Alevi oral lyric tradition may lead us to non-conclusions and even away from the function and ontological vitality – its creativity and interpretive drive – of the expressive culture. In asserting this approach as characteristic of ‗pre-encounters‘ I
105 do not suggest they are not of great erudition, purpose or value – quite the contrary, as they form, from a phenomenological perspective, a critical station of understanding that supports and propels, among other things, the hermeneutical objectives of this study.
2.5 Summary: the deyiş and the mahlas from encounters to explications
In this chapter I have characterised my examination of Pir Sultan Abdal and Kul
Himmet as encounters, by which I mean to suggest hermeneutical ‗pre- understanding‘. This is not to imply false understandings but rather that it is an interpretive process that only proceeds to limited understanding. At the centre of this encounter I have focused on the principal preoccupation of the literature on Pir
Sultan Abdal: his historical identity. It is certainly true to say that Pir Sultan Abdal in many respects represents a unique case because of the survival in the oral tradition of a powerful legend concerning his life that complements and shades - and undoubtedly inspires the creation of – the body of lyric texts attributed to his name.
However, Pir Sultan Abdal‘s singularity in this respect may also be understood as the possibilities of the oral tradition working with historically constructed and socially maintained material being more fully developed.
The concentration on the historical Pir Sultan Abdal certainly highlights the social and political context and circumstance from which this major voice of Alevi identity, as perceived and expressed in modern Republican Turkey, was formed. Pir Sultan
Abdal is one of the most potent and pervasive prisms through which Alevi perceptions of resistance, steadfastness, virtue and martyrdom are focused. The persona represented by Pir Sultan Abdal in the lyric content attributed to him and in
106 his legendary life, indeed in the very nature of the name, asserts the authority of an exemplary and unquenchable life. While scholars work hard to situate Pir Sultan
Abdal within the specific milieu of rebellious activities, the legend and songs focus more on the personal encounter of Pir Sultan Abdal with his nemesis Hızır Paşa.
While this does not contradict a putative historical life of an eponymous Pir Sultan
Abdal involved in antinomian and insurgent activities of sixteenth century Anatolia, it does suggest that it is the meaning of such a life rather than the narrative detail or chronological veracity that has been maintained and developed within the tradition.
In a similar way, the suggestion of multiple Pir Sultan identities is neither surprising nor particularly instructive in terms of our understanding other than highlighting the maintenance of such an authoritative and meaningful identity within Alevi ritual, cultural and social traditions. Indeed in focusing on the issue of persona and lyric attribution I have sought to highlight the role such attribution, in all its ambiguity, plays in forming and reforming the connections and transmission of authority and lineage that are an important quality of Alevi oral culture.
In also considering encounters with the identities of Kul Himmet and Kul Himmet
Üstadım, where, unlike Pir Sultan Abdal, there is no developed legendary life, I have sought to highlight the processes of the oral tradition (in which traditional lyrics are maintained, constructed and interpreted) while suggesting the determination of authorial identity ultimately provides a limited contribution to an understanding of their functional meaning. Suggestions that a later poet may have contributed lyrics to a tradition of lyrics associated with one of the great and seminal ozan-s, such as Kul
Himmet, are really not remarkable and reveal little more than the natural maintenance of lyric works in the oral tradition. Again, I have suggested that in order
107 to move beyond these encounters, these pre-understandings, we need to look at the interpretive meaning. In the work of Kul Himmet or Kul Himmet Üstadım I have suggested, for example, that the interpretation of the metonym ‗master‘ is of more significance.
It has also been my purpose in describing these encounters to establish the critical role of the mahlas. Ultimately the preoccupations with authorial identity, which is the main thrust of scholarly focus on Pir Sultan Abdal and Kul Himmet Üstadım, settle upon establishing a corpus of work with an identity understood from the mahlas name. The many books and anthologies of deyiş categorised by mahlas identities represent the endeavour of establishing typologies of attribution. The mahlas is revealed as the single pivotal textual integer around which a body of lyrics is formed, primarily understood as the marker of putative authorship. The concept of attribution of authorship is significant and of course bears meaning in terms of authority. However the consequence and limits of such an understanding is the focus on errors of attribution implying the dysfunction of the tradition or those who express or collect the lyrics. In order to advance an understanding of the mahlas beyond the limits of an authorial signature, I intend in the next chapter to explicate upon the mahlas in the context of the lyric form which it essentially defines, the deyiş.
108 3. EXPLICATIONS: THE DEYIŞ LYRIC FORM AND THE MAHLAS TAKING TRADITION
3.1 Introduction
In this chapter I will undertake a detailed explanation of the mahlas and its role as a defining textual integer in the principal Alevi expressive form the deyiş lyric. I will discuss definitions, terminologies, structures and themes in respect to the deyiş lyric form and consider the example of variants in text and how this suggests interpretive processes. I will then examine the mahlas in some detail particularly in respect to the various means through which the mahlas is acquired and how it is perceived by the aşık-s. I will also consider the mahlas in the context of its structure and form within the deyiş to reveal how this may help us to arrive at an understanding of a more nuanced meaning and function of the mahlas than proprietary attribution.
3.2 Deyiş
The deyiş is the principal lyric form through which Alevi culture and identity is expressed. Alevi culture has been essentially and fundamentally an oral and expressive (performative) culture maintained through the services of the aşık both within the ritual setting (cem) and outside through the performance of deyiş in formalised gatherings (muhabbet) and elsewhere including popular recordings, television appearances, concerts and festival appearances by influential Alevi performers. Even (or perhaps owing to) the advent of more open expression of Alevi culture through publications, recordings and broadcasts, the deyiş remains a central vehicle for cultural expression and as a concise song form suggestive of associative
109 meaning well suited to the ‗oral culture‘ of the Internet109 through video posting sites like YouTube.
Having seen in the previous chapter how perceptions of Pir Sultan Abdal are based upon the deyişler attributed to him and how they are interpreted and used, I will examine the deyiş lyric song form in order to understand how it supports the dynamics of Alevi expressive culture, which will be the focus of a later chapter of my thesis. I begin by establishing a functional conceptualisation of the deyiş lyric form. I will consider the definition and terminology of the deyiş and related and sub- genre forms; identify its main structural elements and subject themes; and, discuss its functional and expressive context.
3.2.1 Definitions
Standard (Turkish-English) dictionary definitions of the term deyiş refer to ―a kind of folk poem or song‖ (Redhouse yeni Türkçe-İngilizce sözlük = New Redhouse
Turkish-English dictionary 1983) and ―folk poetry‖ or ―folk song‖ (Hony and İz
1992) with further reference to the derivation from the verb demek, ‗to speak‘.
Literally it means: a saying, a style of speech or a statement (Hony and İz 1992)110.
The standard Turkish dictionary (sözlük) published by the Türk Dil Kurumu (Turkish
Language Foundation) provides definitions such as saying (deme) or statement
(ifade) as well as halk şiiri (folk poem) or halk türküsü (folk song) (Türkçe sözlük
109 John Miles Foley is pioneering the study of the homologies of the oral tradition and the Internet which he characterises as ‗agoras‘; the oral tradition as the oAgora, the textual as the tAgora and the Internet as the eAgora. Foley‘s Pathways Project aims to ―illustrate and explain the fundamental similarities and correspondences between humankind‘s oldest and newest thought-technologies: oral tradition and the Internet‖ (quoted from http://www.pathwaysproject.org/pathways/show/HomePage, viewed: 27 October 2010). 110 When referring to an adage, maxim or aphorism the compound form özdeyiş (literally genuine or true saying) is used.
110 2009). The Turkish -iş (or -ış depending on the rules of vowel harmony) suffix forms a verbal noun, thus deyiş has the sense of a ‗manner‘ or ‗way‘ of speaking. Lewis states that it connotes not only the manner but the ―fact of action‖ (Lewis 1991, 172).
Such definitions serve to direct us to the principal underlying concepts to be understood by the term; that is, its intrinsic meaning of being a statement and moreover the action involved or way of making a statement.
While the dictionary definitions quoted above do not refer to the use of the term in the specific context of Alevi expressive culture, it is in the context of Alevi culture that the deyiş is primarily, if not exclusively, understood. Arif Sağ makes the point that in talking of deyiş this also includes Sunni ozan-s, mentioning Ruhsati as an example (Poyraz 2007, 169)111. Sağ suggests that it is the internal meaning that defines it as Alevi not the deyiş form itself. Nevertheless the term has become particularly associated with Alevi expressive culture through the prevalence of Alevi deyiş – Sağ suggests seven out of ten – a predominance exerted through mass media, recordings and the Internet. The deyiş should therefore be understood in broad terms and even in the context of Alevi culture is most usefully understood as being broad ranging and inclusive of lyrics on any subject that relate to the themes of Alevi belief, social concerns, experience and identity.
Gloria Clarke in her monograph on Alevi culture and identity variously refers to deyiş as ―Alevi songs‖ (Clarke 1999, 73), a ―type of religious song‖ (Clarke 1999, 5), a ―song poem‖ (Clarke 1999, 92) and even as ―hymns‖ (Clarke 1999, 135; 138). In
111 Ruhsati is a major aşık from the Sivas region who occupies a somewhat ambiguous world between the Alevi and Sunni. Although his lyrics do not assert the fundamental themes of Alevi ritual belief he is certainly considered within the broader ambit of Alevi expressive culture. Özmen (1998) includes Ruhsati in his monumental collection of Alevi-Bektaşi poetry.
111 her glossary definition Clarke settles on: ―songs and poems common in Alevi-
Bektashi literature; themes related to tarikat beliefs and principles and describing their influence in daily experience‖ (Clarke 1999, 161). Markoff summarises succinctly both broad and specific definitions: ―poetry of minstrels in general; poetry of mystical poets of Anatolia, especially‖ (Markoff 1986a, Appendix F) and elsewhere as ―songs of mystical love‖ (Markoff 1994a, 1986b, 2002b) and notes that,
Alevi minstrels and musicians refer to their collective repertoire of sung mystical poetry as deyiş (from the verb demek meaning ‗to speak‘ or ‗to declaim‘ [poetry]. Deyiş in more specific terms refers to poetry by a known minstrel which is sung to the accompaniment of the folk lute (bağlama). (Markoff 1986a, 58)
Laxmi Tewari who collected field recordings from Alevi villages in the Divriği area in 1970 defines deyiş as a ―kind of folk poem or song‖ and observes that according to the people of the villages they are ―songs which are written about the Prophet
Muhammed, his children and the twelve Imams or religious sayings set in poem‖
(Tewari 1972a)112 .
Korkmaz (2005a) in his dictionary of Alevi-Bektaşi terms defines deyiş in the following manner:
“Alevi-Bektaşi edebiyatında, tarikat, yol inancını ve tarikat, yol ilkelerini dile getiren, bu kapsamda güncel yaşamı betimleyen, serbest konulu şiir.”
In Alevi-Bektashi literature, a poem on any subject relating to daily life that mentions the principles or beliefs of the dervish order or way.
112 Tewari also produced a commercial long play record of some of his village recordings and reiterates this definition in the liner notes (Tewari 1972b).
112
Duygulu, who provides the most substantial treatment of the deyiş in Alevi culture, particularly concentrating on its function as a musical lyric form, supports
Korkmaz‘s definition stating that in Alevi music and literature deyiş is mostly used as a general name for poems describing the tarikat (dervish order) principles and beliefs113. Özbek includes a similar definition in his dictionary of Turkish folk music terms, but also includes broader definitions including simply türkü (folksong) which he expands in a further definition to ―önemli bir olay üzerine yakılmış türkü, manıt‖
(a folksong composed on an important event) (Özbek 1998)114.
The deyiş, then, may be understood as a traditional folk song form that has a purposeful intent – that of a statement, something spoken from a position. In the lyric form, being inherently a genre of experiences, emotions, feelings and instruction – rather than narrative or plot – where persona is a defining attribute, the deyiş represents the statement of a position, a point of view, which, I will argue, is asserted and sealed in the form of its ubiquitous (and defining) textual integer of attribution – the mahlas.
3.2.2 Terminologies
My purpose is to explore the deyiş as a folk lyric conceptualised as personally sealed
– authorised – and to suggest that its defining characteristic of invoking attribution requires deeper consideration of how such attribution suggests meaning, particularly
113 ―Alevi-Bektaşi müziğinde ve edebiyatında deyiş daha çok tarikat ilkelerini ve inancını anlatan şiirlerin genel adıdır‖ (Duygulu 1997, 5). 114 Curiously, in his later expanded dictionary of the language of folksongs titled Türkülerin dili Özbek (2009) does not include the term deyiş at all, suggesting perhaps that a common understanding of the term had settled by the late 2000s.
113 in respect to Alevi expressive culture, where the deyiş is created and maintained and interpreted.
While terminology is less important in respect to function than to the concept as it is understood, nevertheless, a consideration of terminology is necessary to establish its relationship to, and the meaning it inherits from, what can be understood as sub- genre forms of the deyiş as well as from related forms.
Duygulu states that the term began to be used from the thirteenth-century, noting its use in the form ‗tiyiş‘ in a gazel by Mevlânâ (Rumi); and that slowly over the centuries as aşık music and literature took shape the term established its place
(Duygulu 1997, 1)115. While the term is in widespread use throughout Anatolia among Alevis and rural (köy = village) Bektaşi-s (Duygulu 1997), other terms are used including deme in the Malatya region, beyit in Erzincan and ayet in Sivas
(Duygulu 1997, 8). Duygulu also notes that Bektaşi-s in Nurhak116 (located between
Kahramanmaraş and Elbistan) refer to performed songs (ezgili şiirler = literally,
115 Köprülü (2006, 261) identifes the same line from Rumi‘s verse: “hem men çakır içer men, hem men teyiş bilir men‖ (I both drink wine and know deyiş). Gazel is the Turkish form of ghazal which Schimmel describes as a lyrical poem with monorhyme and a vehicle for love lyrics, prayer poetry and mystical songs; and common in the Persian, Turkish and Urdu tradition (Schimmel 2001, 162). It is one of the principle poetic forms of Persian and Arabic poetry, being the lyric form distinguished from the ode (qasida) quatrain (ruba„i) and epic (masnavi) (Ernst 1997, 149-150). In Turkey the gazel is associated with Ottoman culture, employs the weighted aruz metre (rather than the syllabic metre of folk poetry) and, in Andrews words, ―was the heart and soul of classical Ottoman literature … and a major voice in the song of Turkish culture‖ (Andrews 1985, 5) . 116 Nurhak has become a prominent source of Alevi expressive culture through the influence of performances and recordings by Dertli Divani, a dede from Kısas village in the Şanlıurfa region, who often officiates at ritual services (cem) in Nurhak. Divani‘s performing group Hasbihal also includes the Nurhaklı musician Mustafa Kılçık. Arif Sağ included the Nurhak Semahı on his 2002 recording Dost Yarası and both Divani and Sağ produced video clips of their recording which I witnessed broadcast on Turkish television popular music video clip shows in 2002.
114 poems with tunes) reflecting Alevi-Bektaşi philosophy and beliefs as deyiş.
However, older people call these songs nefes117.
The areas where the term deyiş is in widespread usage, according to Duygulu, represents a large part of central and eastern Anatolia from near Ankara in the west to Kars in the east and from the Black Sea (Samsun) to the Mediterranean (Mersin).
Specifically Duygulu (1997, 10-11) notes the usage as follows:
1. Among the Tahtacı tribes in the area from İçel (Mersin) to Gaziantep (although among some of the Tahtacı Türkmen of this area nefes is used); 2. Among the Alevis and village Bektaşi-s of Gaziantep, Şanlıurfa and Adıyaman; and, 3. Among Alevis in Kahramanmaraş, Malatya, Sivas, Erzurum, Erzincan, Kars, Gümüşhane, Tunceli, Bingöl, Muş, Elazığ, Tokat, Amasya, Çorum, Kırıkkale, Kayseri and Samsun. Among the Kurdish speaking Alevi of Tunceli, Muş and Bingöl the related term dej is used.
3.2.3 Deyiş or nefes
The terms deyiş and nefes, as suggested above, may be interchangeable, particularly among older generations, where the term nefes may in fact be more common. The preference for the term deyiş in more recent times indicates a broader conceptualisation (and consequently a broader functionality) for the lyric form. Since the term has currency in Anatolian usage and an association that is not restricted to devotional use, nor a specific association with the urban Bektaşi tarikat, it is more suited to modern Alevi expression that derives its impetus from Anatolian culture.
117 I can report a similar experience with those of an older generation preferring the term nefes. When I would perform deyiş – including those of a more social rather than mystical nature – in the presence of the father-in-law (an Alevi Kurd from the Tunceli/Dersim region in his sixties) of my friend and bağlama teacher he would always refer to them as nefes.
115
Early twentieth century writing on, and collections of, Alevi lyric works used the term nefes. Sadettin Nüzhet Ergun, who produced the first monograph on Pir Sultan
Abdal in 1929, collected the lyrics of 105 songs in his work under the heading
―Nefesler” (Ergun 1929). Besim Atalay in his 1924 monograph titled Bektaşilik ve edebiyatı118 (Atalay 1991) and Köprülü in his 192κ article titled ―Bir Kızılbaş şairi:
Pir Sultan Abdal” (Köprülü 1991), both significant early works on Alevi-Bektaşi literature, use the term nefes. This usage has continued in significant publications on
Alevi lyric poetry and song including works by Vahid Lütfi Salcı (1940) and
Gölpınarlı (1963). These works, notably, come from a literary perspective and from an urban setting (specifically western Turkey) where the Bektaşi tradition was prominent in the perception of Alevi (kızılbaş) traditions. While these early work certainly did distinguish the social differences between Alevis and Bektaşi-s, both
Köprülü and Ergun emphasising that Pir Sultan Abdal was Alevi or kızılbaş for example, the lyric songs themselves are generally understood as common to both traditions, as is clearly the case in the title of two editions of Gölpınarlı‘s Alevi-
Bektaşi nefesleri (Gölpınarlı 1963, 1992) and in İsmail Özmen‘s monumental five volume collection produced for the Turkish Republic Cultural Ministry in 1998
Alevi-Bektaşi şiirleri antolojisi (Özmen 1998)119.
The term nefes is used to identify songs (deyiş) used in the ritual service (cem) for veneration or worship. Markoff, for example, defines them as ―songs concerning the
118 Translation: Bektaşi-ism and its literature. 119 Interestingly, while Özmen obviously uses the generic term for poem – şiir – in the title of his work, in the glossary to the first volume he defines nefes by two terms, soluk (the literal meaning of ‗breath‘) and deyiş. However as deyiş is not included in the glossary at all it is assumed that this would be the current and more commonly understood term.
116 mystical experience‖ (Markoff 2002b). They are commonly conceived as hymns120 particularly associated with the Bektaşi tradition and related to the composed Sufi hymn form, the ilahi, but with a more simple folksong like melody (Korkmaz
2005a). So while in many circumstances the term nefes may be interchangeable with deyiş it does not encompass the broader scope of the deyiş. And when used in the
Anatolian Alevi context nefes it specifically distinguishes the songs appropriate for services in the cem or formal and ritualised gatherings such as the muhabbet121 in which worshipful songs are performed. Yaman and Erdemir (2006) refer to them as
―religious songs‖ encompassing the song forms specific to ritual including the düaz-ı imam, miraçlama, semah and mersiye. Nefes also remains the preferred term for
Bektaşi mystical songs most particularly in the European (Trakya = Thracian) region of Turkey122.
3.2.4 Structural characteristics – syllables and symbol
Deyiş are predominantly in the Turkish folk verse forms koşma and semai. The most common form, the koşma, consists of eleven syllables with a regular caesura in units of 6+5 or 4+4+3. The semai, which may in fact be understood as a type of koşma
(Güzel and Torun 2005, 360-361), has eight syllables and units of 5+3 or 4+4.
Taking the deyiş attributed to Pir Sultan Abdal as a sample Haydar Kaya‘s analysis of the 407 deyiş in his anthology identifies 83 percent as being in eleven syllable koşma form and all but two of the rest being in eight syllable semai form (Kaya
120 See Clarke (Clarke 1999), Markoff (Markoff 1986a), Redhouse (Redhouse yeni Türkçe-İngilizce sözlük = New Redhouse Turkish-English dictionary 1983). 121 See Uluçay‘s collection titled Alevilikte cem nefesleri (Uluçay 1996). 122 A substantial collection of nefesler from this tradition was published under the aegis of the Turkish Republic Cultural Ministry by Hüseyin Yaltırık in 2002 in a book titled Trakya Bölgesinin Tasavvufî Halk Müziği (notalarıyla) Nefesler, Semahlar (Yaltırık 2002). This collection, the title of which which can be translated as ‗Sufi folk music, hymns and ritual dances of the Thracian region with their musical notation‘, includes many Pir Sultan texts under this designation.
117 1999, 54). Bezirci‘s analysis comes up with a similar figure with ι0 percent being koşma and 30 percent being in the semai form (Bezirci 1993, 120-121). The stanzas may be understood to be composed in quatrains (dörtlük) following a rhyme scheme of a,b,a,b for the first stanza followed by c,c,c,b; d,d,d,b etc. for subsequent stanzas.
These forms utilise purely syllabic metre (hece vezni) in contrast to the weighted metre (aruz vezni) of Ottoman classical verse. The deyiş in koşma form have as a minimum three stanzas (Duygulu 1997, 37) but can range up to a moderately substantial length as in the example of Edip Harabi‘s Vahdetname with 28 verses
(Özmen 1998: 4, 528). However, for the most part the deyiş is a concise lyric form.
Bezirci‘s analysis of 196 Pir Sultan Abdal texts shows that 53.4 percent have five stanzas with the majority of the rest having four (13.3 percent), six (15.4 percent) or seven (12.8 percent) verses (Bezirci 1994, 119).
Deyiş in other forms or syllabic metre while far less prominent than koşma and semai are encountered, including deyiş in mani form, a very widespread form of folk quatrain which is more commonly anonymous without attribution within the lyric123.
Like the koşma it has a syllabic meter but consisting of a seven syllable line with a rhyme scheme generally following the form a,a,x,a throughout. Anonymous folk mani may consist of a single quatrain, however they may also be strung together with repetitive elements forming a ‗chain of mani‟. This may be the repetition of a the mahlas name at the beginning of each quatrain (Duygulu 1997, 43) or as the repetition of some or all of the last line of a preceding quatrain in the first line of the following quatrain. This may reflect a mnemonic device for longer thematically
123 This would appear to be quite rare however. Markoff suggests that minstrels have shown minimal interest in using the mani form and that its principal themes are love and nature (Markoff 1986a, 60- 61). Başgöz says that the main inspiration for mani is sensual and erotic love and among its many functions are as love messages between young people, in riddles and rituals and ceremonies (Başgöz 1998b, 62).
118 coherent lyric texts as demonstrated in what is perhaps the most notable example of the use of the mani form in this way in Alevi tradition, the tevhid beginning Bugün bize pir geldi attributed to Kul Himmet (Üstadım) which runs to a chain of more than two dozen quatrains124. Mani may also appear as a multiple versed lyric without the repetitive elements but retaining the defining syllabic form and rhyme scheme125.
Duygulu notes that in addition to the more common eleven, eight and seven syllable forms of koşma and mani, five and fifteen syllable deyiş are also encountered
(Duygulu 1997, 44).
While traditional lyric forms employing a variety of syllabic meter, though most notably the koşma, is the structural vehicle for the deyiş, this could not be said to be the defining structural characteristic since these forms, while strongly identified with the deyiş, have wider currency in Turkish folk song.
The common structural element that is most characteristic in defining the deyiş is the mahlas beyit (verse). The final verse of the lyric includes reference to a named persona, commonly understood as the aşık responsible for the lyric, the identity to whom in some respect the lyric is attributed, whether that is authorship (most overtly) or some other association. The mahlas will be discussed in more detail in the second part of this chapter and the point to emphasise here is that the attribution or reference to a poetic persona reinforces the character of the deyiş as a statement by evoking a specific voice, or presence, to which authority and identity may be attached or assumed. In proclaiming a responsibility through the attributed persona, the deyiş is in fundamental respects the expression of commitment, certainly on
124 The full text and translation is included in the Translations chapter, section 5.8.3. 125 Duygulu includes an example from Pir Sultan Abdal, Alçacık yemiş dalı (Duygulu 1997, 44).
119 behalf of the composer or the performer of individual lyrics in respect to the content of the lyric. It is also an expression of commitment to both the tradition that the convention of the form represents and to the community that identifies – and identifies with – the personas and determines how they are received and interpreted.
That is, relationships are established that involve the personas in the lyric attribution, the performers, the interpreters or intermediary authorities (as in ritual contexts) and the receptive community and audience. In this respect the mahlas expressed within the deyiş form may be considered the essential traditional textual integer of Alevi expressive culture since it invokes a link in the web of charismatic authorial and authoritative lineage in expressive communal contexts – and this in turn naturally sustains and maintains the importance and function of the deyiş form itself. Names, actual or assumed, are symbolic labels; and understood as a textual integer in the context of the lyric may, through their symbolic and associative properties provide the evidence for, to co-opt Foley‘s words, ―value-added signification‖ and
―extratextual reality‖ (Foley 1995, 140). In other words, the deyiş is characterised most significantly through the structural element of the mahlas as a lyric that has the inherent potential to express immanent and entextualised meaning (evoked by the attribution to the named persona) in addition to the thematic meaning of the text and the context of any given performance.
3.2.5 Specific genre forms and their relationship to deyiş
There are some song forms used in Alevi ritual that may be considered specific or specialised genre forms which also constitute an intrinsic or foundational component of what may be understood by the more generic appellations nefes and deyiş. That is to say the deyiş (and nefes) are necessarily defined in part by their formal
120 relationship to these specific genre forms. These forms relate to functions they perform in the ritual context of Alevi expression and as such display specific thematic, subject and expressive characteristics that identify them as a distinct category of song. Consequently they are often referred to alongside the term deyiş126.
The main examples of these forms include:
duaz-ı imam (otherwise düazimam, duvazdeh imam) – a hymn in honour of the Twelve Imams of Shi‘a tradition127; mersiye – a lament for the Imam Husayn martyred at Kerbela; tevhid – a song expressing unity, specifically of the unity of God and Ali as God‘s companion128; miraçlama – a song concerning the ascent of Muhammad to heaven; and,
semah – a sacred ritual dance.
The semah is a particular ritual form of Alevi music that has attracted the most attention from scholars129. Unlike the forms mentioned above the semah is not defined so strictly by the subject of its text; or at least the subject may vary considerably provided it remains within the bounds of the sacred purpose of the
126 See for example Zelyut‘s discussion of Alevi music in which he distinguishes no less than nine forms: deyiş, nefes, düazimam, mersiyye (ağıt), naat (övgü), zülfikarname, miraçlama (miraciye), devriyye and samah (Zelyut 1998, 169-179). Onatça discusses a somewhat more straightforward list including deyiş, nefes, duaz-ı imam, miraçlama, mersiye and semah (Onatça 2007). Yaman and Erdemir (2006, 58) identify the duaz-ı imam, miraçlama, semah and mersiye as subcategories of religious poems (nefes). Interestingly they all omit the tevhid. 127 The duaz-ı imam will be considered in more detail in the Experiences chapter to follow. 128 Veliyettin Ulusoy (2010, 53) calls this the crowning devotional work (taçlama duazı) in which the sacred names are remembered; also noting that the congregation (cemaat) repeat in rhythmic time the monotheistic formula ‗La İllahe İllallah‘ and sway from side to side in ecstasy and awe. The tevhid ends with the repetition three times of the seven lines: „La İllahe İllahah Ali Mürşid Ali Şah Ali Haydar Ali Şah Ali Esed Ali Şah Ali Şir‟dir Ali Şah Eyvallah Şahım Eyvallah La İllahe İllallah‟ 129 Of particular note are works by Salcı (1941), Markoff (1994a), Onatça (2007), Dinçal (1997), Erseven (2001), and Bozkurt (1995). Collections of semah with musical notation have also appeared in popular print editions in Turkey including those by Turan (2000) and Değerli (2004).
121 dance130. The function it serves as a mystical dance form tends to stress its expressive qualities rather than the subject of the text, though it should be noted there are semah such as the kırklar semahı (sacred dance of the Forty), the kırat semahı (the sacred dance of the grey horse) and the turna semahı (sacred dance of the red crane) that are characterised in some part by specific themes and references in the text. In the case of the turna semahı, for example, there is reference to the turna (red crane) a sacred symbol in Alevi-Bektaşi culture131. Indeed, perhaps the most widely known and performed version of the turna semahı in the public space in recent years, that is the version that forms part of the Turkish Radio and Television repertoire, uses a somewhat incoherent text attributed to the renowned seventeenth-century minstrel from the southern Anatolian region of the Taurus Mountains, Karacaoğlan – whose lyrics do not include Alevi themes – though still including reference to the turna.
While the text may be corrupted, with the mahlas identity changed to an aşık not specifically related to Alevi ritual culture, the song still functions as a prominent public representation of the Alevi semah due to its complex musical structure incorporating changes in metre and tempo, exemplary of the semah form132. In Alevi song forms, even as ritually significant as the semah, there appears scope to extend the range or nature of the text, while a possibility of creative freedom or necessary cultural discretion can be achieved through the expressive aspects of the song or the
130 A factor that also applies to the musical aspects of the performance of the semah (Markoff 1994a, 103-104). 131 Specifically the turna is motif associated with the Imam Ali or with their possibility of providing a connection to Ali. As Elçin observes, Pir Sultan Abdal asks (in a deyiş) whether or not the cranes have seen Ali when they came from the lands of Yemen and performed the ―Semâ‖ (semah) in the air (Elçin 1997b). However, as Elçin‘s study shows, the turna motif has a long and widespread tradition in Turkish folk literature (and broader than its specific function in Alevi-Bektashi lyric) especially as a news bringing (haber) motif. 132 The turna semah in this form is, for example, included on the recordings promoted as Alevi semah or ‗classics works‘ directed by the Alevi musicians Musa Eroğlu (1993b) and Zafer Gündoğdu (Various n.d.).
122 retention of key signifiers that inherit immanent qualities133. This is evident for the deyiş more generally when we consider the themes and subject range of the deyiş.
3.2.6 Themes and subjects in the deyiş
Duygulu states that the principal subjects treated by the deyiş can be separated broadly into those on religious subjects (dini konular) and those outside religious subjects (din dişi konular) (Duygulu 1997, 46). The straightforward division between songs of a religious or worshipful nature (ibadet) and those of a non-religious nature is an understanding that is commonly stated. In writing about Alevi music in the monthly journal of the Karacaahmet Sultan Derneği134 Battal Odabaş divides Alevi music into ―dinsel içerikli‖ (of religious content) and ―toplumsal içerikli‖ (of social content) (Odabaş 2001, 21). Arif Sağ draws distinctions in the technique of performance and in the textual (edabi = literary) aspects of Alevi music, that is
―ibadet müziği‖ (music for worship) and that which he refers to as ―dinleti müziği‖
(music for listening) (Yürükoğlu 1993, 43). Duygulu (1997, 46-60) notes the major themes that appear in the deyiş of a religious nature including:
the theme of ―teslis inancı‖ – that is, texts with a theme of the belief in the Allah, Muhammad, Ali trinity;
the theme of ―Ehl-i Beyt sevgisi‖ – that is, love of the Prophet‘s family notably Ali, Hasan, Husayn and Fatima; and,
the theme of the lives of prophets (peygamberler), saints and other dervish leaders and notables (pirler, evliyarlar, ulu kişiler).
133 Özbek has identified a corruption of texts in this version of the semah but considers that Mahmut Erdal, who is the source of this version, achieved an artistic thing in the version he presented to the teacher and folk song collector Nida Tüfekçi (personal communication, Ankara, July 2002). 134 The Association of the Karacaahmet Sultan dergah (an Alevi ‗lodge‘) located in Üsküdar on the Anatolian side of the Bosphorus in Istanbul.
123 Duygulu characterises the themes outside the religious as having didactic and lyric subjects. These include legendary subjects of which the story of Pir Sultan is a significant example, particularly the relationship and climactic encounter with Hızır
Paşa. Also, themes relating to Alevi-Bektaşi ‗philosophy‘ (Alevi-Bektaşı felefesi) that embrace the subjects of Alevi-Bektaşi society, the perfected person (kâmil olan), deep friendship or companionship (dost olan) and the knowledgeable person (irfan sahibi olan). Further themes include love and passion (aşk, sevda); and deyiş that respond to the insult and calumny that Alevi-Bektaşi society has been subject to
(Duygulu 1997, 51-58). Duygulu also makes the important point that even in the deyiş with social themes to the fore, the religious themes are never abandoned; and deyiş with a synthesis of religio-mystical (dini-tasavvuf) and social themes form the most characteristic part of the Alevi-Bektaşi repertoire (Duygulu 1997, 51).
By way of example, the deyiş known as Değiliz, by Aşık İbreti, is an expression of
Alevi social identity confronting an assertive religious orthodoxy. It is indeed a strong statement that asserts Alevi concepts such as the value of inner integrity over outward show. This lyric, composed before the mid-1970s, displays an engagement with contemporary identity politics and an open and outwardly direct social statement.
Minareye çıkıp bize bağırma Haberimiz vardır, sağır değiliz Sen kendini düşün bizi kayırma Sizlere kavgaya uğur değiliz
Her yerde biz Hakk‟ı hazır biliriz Olgun insanları Hızır biliriz
124 Bundan başkasını sıfır biliriz Tahmininiz yanlış, biz kör değiliz
Eğer insanlıksa doğru niyetin Nefsini ıslah et varsa kudretin Bize lazım değil senin cennetin Huriye gılmana esir değiliz
Arapça duaya değiliz mecbur İster müslüman bil, istersen gavur İnsan hor görmek en büyük küfür Buna inanmışız, münkir değiliz
İbreti, bu hâle insan acınır Ham sofular bu sözlerden gücenir Aslına ermeyen elbet gocunur Onu avutmaya mecbur değiliz
(İbreti 1996, 23)
Don‘t climb up the minaret and cry out to us We know this stuff, we‘re not deaf Think about yourself, don‘t worry about us We have no mind to quarrel with you
We know God is present everywhere We know the mature human is immortal We know anything beside this is nothing Your estimation is wrong, we are not blind
Wherever there is humanity your resolve is true Improve you own self if you have the strength We have no necessity for your heaven We‘re not slaves to your houris and pageboys
125
We feel no compulsion for Arabic prayers Consider yourself Muslim if you wish, or whatever To belittle the human is your biggest blasphemy We are not unbelievers, we believe in this
Ibreti, he grieves for humankind at this time Crude fanatics will be encouraged by these words The one who is unaware of his true self will take offence We feel no compulsion to delude or amuse them
If we accept the broad conceptualisation of the deyiş as capable of expressing a wide range of sentiment and subjects, what is it then that characterises the lyric as an Alevi deyiş? I would suggest that certain elements must be present but also that there are gradations in respect to such inclusiveness and this naturally involves how the lyric is received and understood. Such elements include the attribution to aşık-s who identify as Alevi, the language used and associative expressive qualities. İbreti‘s deyiş is an example of a song of social comment that falls well within the conception of Alevi song while demonstrating the extension of expressive comment. Its expression as an
Alevi statement (Alevi deyiş) not merely as a socio-political one perhaps, is established by the fact that İbreti composed his song using musical material that is strongly associated with Alevi ritual. The musical structure of the song (notated below) as performed by İbreti135 is the same as that of the long and masterful devriye
– a nefes sung in the cem dealing with cycle of existence – of Şiri beginning Cihan var olmadan ketmi ademde136.
135 I am grateful to İbreti‘s grandson İrfan Gürel for providing me with a copy of a home recording of İbreti performing this deyiş. 136 The text and translation of this devriye can be found in Birge (1994, 122-125). There is some doubt about Şiri‘s identity but he is believed to have been Bektaş Çelebi (1710-1761); see Özmen (1998: 3, 183f). The devriye can be heard in the performance context of the cem on recording made by Tsutomu
126
3.2.7 Deyiş – viewing expressive context in textual variants
Many deyiş appear in variant forms, as might be expected for lyrics in an oral tradition. These variations in text are often minor but are revealing of expressive context and interpretation – perhaps all the more so because they are minor since we can see how predominant thematic material is nuanced. It is certainly the case that deyiş attributed to Pir Sultan Abdal appear with these small variations and I will look at two examples more closely.
The following deyiş attributed to Pir Sultan, Gel benim sarı tanburam (Come my yellow lute), appears with slight but indicative variations in the earliest publications of Pir Sultan Abdal lyrics, those of Atalay (1991)137, Ergun (1929) and Gölpınarlı and Boratav (1943). Indeed it is the slightness of the variations that are indicative because in this we can witness a certain finessing or clarifying of associative Alevi aspects while retaining a text that is more general in its subject and overt meaning.
The lyric does not have elements that typically demonstrate the themes and subjects central to the Pir Sultan Abdal such as devotion to the Shah, to the Imam Ali or his
Oohashi in Istanbul in 1993 (An esoteric Sufi ceremony 1994). Although this recording gives no detail of the performers or the cem recorded it sounds as though it comes from the Malatya tradition. 137 Original publication in Ottoman text in 1924 (Atalay 1340 (1924)).
127 life story or the landscape of land around Yıldız Dağı. Nevertheless, Aslanoğlu includes it as an accepted lyric to be attributed to the principal identity of his six Pir
Sultan Abdals, the Banazlı Pir Sultan, ostensibly on the principal evidence of the mahlas form and the fact that it does not display any internal evidence that would discount it for inclusion (Aslanoğlu 19κ4, 206-207)138. The issue is not about authenticity but, rather, that within the tradition Pir Sultan is understood to have been the author or authentic voice of what is expressed in the deyiş even though it does not necessarily profess the themes at the centre of our understanding of his identity. In other words, we see the possibility of expanding the expressive dimension, albeit subtly, within the traditional expressive structures.
The text of the deyiş presented here is from Gölpınarlı and Boratav (1943, 99-100) and would appear to be a composite or standardised text drawn from three (or more) sources. Gölpınarlı and Boratav indicate the sources as Ergun (1929) and Atalay
(1991) and (presumably more than one) cönk and mecmua in the possession of
Gölpınarlı139. I have indicated lines with verbal (but not morphological) variants in square brackets, ‗BA‘ referring to Besim Atalay, ‗SNE‘ referring to Sadettin Nüzhet
Ergun and ‗ABGc‘ referring to a variant in a çönk or mecmua as indicated by
Gölpınarlı.
Gel benim sarı tanburam [Ey benim sarı tanburam – SNE] Sen ne için inilersin İçim oyuk derdim büyük
138 Unfortunately Aslanoğlu does not provide any detail about the reasons for the association of individual lyrics with the six Pir Sultan Abdals he proposes. 139 Reference to the çönk and mecmua are noted by the abbreviation ―A.B.G, c.‖ which is described simply as referring to ―Abdülbâkî‟daki mecmua ve cönkler‖ with no indication of the specific nature, provenance nor number of the manuscripts consulted.
128 Ben anınçin inilerim [Ali deyu inilerim – BA]
Koluma taktılar teli Söyletirler bin bir dili Oldum ayn-i cem bülbülü [Olmuşam Şah‟ın bülbülü – SNE] [Oldum muhabbet bülbüler – BA] Ben anınçin inilerim [Ali deyu inilerim – BA]
Koluma taktılar perde [Başıma koydular perde – BA] Uğrattılar bin bir derde [Uğrattılar dertten derde – SNE] [Uğrattılar türlü derde – BA] Kim konar kin göçer burda [Ayn-i cem gecesi nerde – ABGc] Ben anınçin inilerim [Ali deyu inilerim – BA]
Goğsüme tahta döşerler [Goğsüme tahta deşerler – SNE] Durmayıp beni okşarlar Vurdukça bağrım deşerler [Çaldıkça bağrım deşerler – BA] Ben anınçin inilerim [Ali deyu inilerim – BA]
Gel benim sarı tanburam Dizler üstünde yatıram Yine kırıldı hâtıram Ben anınçin inilerim [Ali deyu inilerim – BA]
129
Sarı tanburadır adım [Bağlamadır benım adım – SNE] Göklere ağar feryadım [Arş‟a çıkıyor feryadım – SNE] [Arşa çıkıyor feryadım – BA] Pir Sultan‟ımdır üstadım [Pirim Sultandır üstadım – BA] Ben anınçin inilerim [Ali deyu inilerim – BA]
Come my yellow lute [Hey my yellow lute] Why do you moan? I am hollow within, my grief is great This is the reason I moan [I moan crying Ali]
They attached string to my arm They made me speak countless languages I was the nightingale in the ceremony [I was the Shah‘s nightingale] [I became the nightingales of love] This is the reason I moan [I moan crying Ali]
They attached fretting to my arm [They placed frets on me] They had me meet with countless sorrows [They had me meet sorrow from end to end] [They had me meet all types of sorrow] Who settles here and who departs [Where is the night of the ceremony] This is the reason I moan
130 [I moan crying Ali]
They lay my body on the seat [They scratched open my body on the seat] They stroked me without ceasing They opened up my breast as they struck [They opened up my breast as they played] This is the reason I moan [I moan crying Ali]
Come my yellow lute I shall lay you on my knee Again my heart is broken This is the reason I moan [I moan crying Ali]
May name it is yellow lute (i.e. tanbura) [My name it is bağlama] My cry rises to the sky [My cry rises to the nine heavens] I am Pir Sultan my master [My Pir is Sultan my master] This is the reason I moan [I moan crying Ali]
İzmet Zeki Eyuboğlu notes the small variants in the versions as being the result of oral transmission, but declares the assumption that it originates from the hand of Pir
Sultan Abdal – ―Pir Sultan Abdal‟ın elinden çıkmış‖ (Eyuboğlu 1991, κ1) – and proposes the original form as being a lament (ağıt) for the Shah. Eyuboğlu relies on a text that includes another variant of the final, repeated line of the quatrain: Ben
131 Şah‟ım deyü ağlarım (I weep for my Shah)140. The variant in the line does not fundamentally alter the meaning from the version presented by Atalay as a lament for the Imam Ali, although the term şah can convey some ambiguity in the context of kzılbaş history since it may also suggest the temporal Safavid monarchs to which the kızılbaş like Pir Sultan Abdal looked to in hope and expectation. As Eyuboğlu notes, other version(s) are expressed as a lament for someone unknown (or at least is unknown to whom it is addressed) (Eyuboğlu 1991, κ1).
In the small but telling changes that the variants illuminate we can see how a text may be expressed in different circumstances. That is, we can see certain meanings shaded in different ways to reveal, more or less strongly, associations with kızılbaş contexts – the devotion to Ali or the şah and the reference to ayin-ı cem or muhabbet.
Certainly formulaic constructions typical of oral traditions should not be rejected nor discounted in this process; nevertheless such choices must be made by the performer or source and the choices revealed in the variants suggest performative control over the gradation of meaning. Importantly it suggests the deyiş as a vehicle for such finesse and interpretation by the performer. A text such as this, even without consideration of specific performance contexts, offers the prospect of interpretation as a general lament through the anthropomorphic symbol of the lute voicing the inner pain of the poet-singer to an esoteric Sufistic interpretation to expression of the socio-political connotations of kızılbaş terminology.
140 Bezirci provides this text beginning ―Ey benim sarı tanburam”, originally from Öztelli, as a separate text from Atalay‘s text beginning ―Gel benim sarı tanburam” despite its very close and obvious similarity. The notable variation in the text is the absence of the penultimate verse of the Atalay version and the rearrangement of the three internal verses. The last line of each verse is the refrain ―Ben Şah‟ım deyü ağlarım” (I weep crying out my Shah) and the first line of the mahlas verse is different, replacing ―Sarı tanburam benim adım” (my name is yellow tanbura) to the more modern sounding ―Bağlamadır benim adım”(My name is bağlama) (Bezirci 1994, 235).
132 The most significant associative attribute of the deyiş is the mahlas for even with the nuances of expression in respect to Alevi (kızılbaş) terminology, the attribution to Pir
Sultan Abdal establishes an authority for the expressed sentiment. Indeed Eyuboğlu‘s acceptance of the reported attribution to Pir Sultan Abdal appears to lead him to the assertion of the original form of the lyric was that specifying the object of the lament as the şah (Eyuboğlu 1991, κ1). We can accept the sentiment of this deyiş as authentic for the persona of Pir Sultan Abdal because it can be related to fundamental metonyms of that persona – devotion to Ali and the kızılbaş community and identity.
So the sentiment becomes authoritative through its perceived (and accepted) authenticity – and this is the intrinsic mechanism for our understanding of how the deyiş means.
The following deyiş is one of the most popular songs attributed to Pir Sultan Abdal among contemporary (late twentieth and early twenty-first century) performers. The source of the text cited by Gölpınarlı and Boratav (Gölpınarlı and Boratav 1943,
123), the first to print it, is Aşık Ali İzzet Özkan. Gölpınarlı and Boratav include it among the texts considered to be of doubtful Pir Sultan provenance.
Songs concerning the nightingale (bülbül) in Turkish folklore are common, usually containing the injunction to cease singing since the bird‘s song is incompatible with the state of the singer. This injunction commonly appears in formulaic expressions such as ötme bülbül ötme (don‘t sing nightingale don‘t sing) or ötme garip bülbül
(don‘t sing strange nightingale) and completed with gönül şen değil (my heart is not happy) or bağrım deldin (you pierce my heart)141. The popularity of the theme of the
141 Examples can be found in Öztelli‘s large published collection of folksongs titled Evlerinin önü: türküler (Öztelli 2002, 279, 317, 320, 326). In some cases the bird is the turna (red crane) rather than
133 nightingale‘s song revealing and accentuating the pain of the poet-singer cannot of itself determine the authenticity of the text in regards to authorial provenance – but then this is not the sole characteristic of authenticity that is pertinent to the functioning of the deyiş. Why this particular lyric functions effectively and could be said to inherit vocative authenticity (if not necessarily authorial provenance) is the use of the thematic and formulaic content related to the persona of Pir Sultan Abdal.
The deyiş relates the suffering of the persona at the centre of the lyric to a signal event in the Pir Sultan Abdal legend, the public failure of support (if not exactly betrayal) by his friend (dost), Ali Baba (though not stated by name in the text but entextualised as reference to the episode in which Ali Baba effectively denies Pir
Sultan in his final moments), as emphasised by the refrain line: Dost senin derdinden ben yana yana (Friend, I burn and burn from the suffering through you). The authoritative function of the lyric is sealed with the expression of Pir Sultan Abdal‘s commitment to Truth142, even at the expense of his life as stated in the final quatrain.
Thus a common theme found in Turkish folklore of the beautiful voiced nightingale revealing the pain of the disconsolate lover is transformed to a central theme of the
Pir Sultan Abdal legend: the value of constancy and commitment to the true way and one‘s people as represented by the personal relations of friendship. In this manner the lyric is – or is made – authentic and authoritative by, and in respect to, the attribution to Pir Sultan Abdal.
Ötme bülbül ötme şen değil bağım Dost senin derdinden ben yana yana Tükendi fitilim eridi yağım Dost senin derdinden ben yana yana the nightingale and while the symbolic character may be different the same formulaic expressions are used. 142 Hak which may also mean ‗Right‘ or ‗God‘. In some versions Hak is altered to Halk (people).
134
Deryada bölünmüş sellere döndüm Vakıtsız açılmış güllere döndüm Ateşi kararmış küllere döndüm Dost senin derdinden ben yana yana
Haberim duyarsın peyikler ile Yarmı sararsın şehitler ile Kırk yıl dağda gezdim geyikler ile Dost senin derdinden ben yana yana
Pir Sultan Abdal‟ım doldum eksildim Yemekten içmekten sudan kesildim Hakkı pek sevdiğim için asıldım Dost senin derdinden ben yana yana
(Gölpınarlı and Boratav 1943, 123)
Don‘t sing nightingale don‘t sing, my garden is cheerless Friend, I burn and burn from the suffering through you My wick is extinguished and my oil used up Friend, I burn and burn from the suffering through you
I have turned to turbid torrents in the sea I have turned to roses opened before their time I have turned to ashes of an extinguished fire Friend, I burn and burn from the suffering through you
You will get news of me with the brave ones You will swaddle my wound with the martyred ones I have roved forty years with the deer on the mountain Friend, I burn and burn from the suffering through you
I am Pir Sultan Abdal finished and gone
135 I was sapped at once without appetite I was hung because I loved the Truth too much Friend, I burn and burn from the suffering through you
Finally, as a lyric form the deyiş does not depend upon narrative coherence but is concerned rather with the expression or condition of the lyric voice. This means that verses may be built upon what may be characterised as paratactic momentum. The suggestion of the immanent world is able to be concisely expressed within lines; and frequent shifts in the voice perspective, case and tense contribute to the energy and thrall of the lyric often climaxing in the mahlas verse. This can only be fully appreciated by reading143 or hearing many deyiş, so two examples must suffice here.
Abdal Pir Sultan‟ı çektiler dâra Düşmüşüm aşkına yanarım nâra Bakın hey erenler şu giden yâra Ne sen beni unut, ne de ben seni
They drew Abdal Pir Sultan to the gallows place I fell down for your love and suffer for you Dervishes, behold that one on the way to the beloved Neither you forget me, nor I forget you …
Pir Sultan Abdal‟ım deftere yazar Hîlebaz yâr ile olur mu Pazar Pir merhem çalmazsa yaralar azar Serversen Ali‟ye değme yarama
I am Pir Sultan Abdal and so it is recorded Is it a marketplace to be a swindler with the beloved?
143 In my English versions in the Translations chapter I have sought to retain these shifts as much as possible to retain this characteristic.
136 Wounds become infected if the master cannot give salve If you love Ali don‘t touch upon my wound
3.3 Mahlas
In the previous section I suggested that the mahlas is a critical textual integer that characterises the lyric form deyiş. In this chapter I intend looking more closely at the mahlas in the context of the Alevi lyric form. I will consider the terminology, how it is acquired and how it functions and suggests meaning.
The mahlas taking tradition (mahlas alma gelenek) is often dealt with, rather cursorily, as simply a ‗tradition‘ – an assertion that is of course not without meaning though limited in its lack of specificity – or simply as the signature of ownership, implying the creator of the lyric (if not the melody or performance). It is not my contention that these descriptions are incorrect; and certainly they do identify significant, if obvious, aspects of the ontology of the mahlas. However, these summations of the mahlas do not adequately explain the persistence and functional importance of the mahlas tradition.
It is my contention that the mahlas functions as a pivotal structural element that permits associative meaning in respect to authority and community identification in a concise manner within the short lyric form central to Alevi expressive culture, the deyiş. Its ubiquity and persistence in the lyric form itself attests to its perception as merely ‗tradition‘. But this does not explain why or how this is so. The vague or general commentary encountered in respect to the mahlas in fact hints at what I interpret to be the essential ontological quality of the mahlas in Alevi deyiş and
137 which gives it (the deyiş lyric form) its great potential for expressive power and creativity. I will argue that is it the relative freedom with which it may appear and be used in the deyiş and manifested over its foundation of intrinsic meanings, authoritative capacities and immanent references, that makes the mahlas so resilient and functional.
3.3.1 Terminology
In Turkish the word mahlas has a common meaning of pseudonym, pen name or even surname (Redhouse yeni Türkçe-İngilizce sözlük = New Redhouse Turkish-
English dictionary 19κ3; Hony and İz 1992). The latter may better be understood, as defined by Redhouse, as a ―second name given at birth‖ rather than as the hereditary family name (soyadı) as mandated by the Turkish Republic Surname Law (Soyadı
Kanunu) of June 1934144. In other words it is a name used in addition to or instead the principal, real (asıl) or given (isim) name. Given the adoption of surnames with the founding of the Turkish Republic the term‘s meaning as a pen name or pseudonym is now prevalent.
The term mahlas (or makhlas in its Persian form) is synonymous with the term takhallus (in Turkish tahallus) (de Bruijn 1999, 49-50) and has the literal meaning of freeing oneself or escaping from something, as derived from the Arabic145. For its usage as a pen name or pseudonym mahlas is more commonly encountered than
144 For details about the enforced adoption and registration of hereditary surnames see Türköz‘s article on the 1934 law (Türköz 2007). 145 See de Bruijn‘s article on ―Takhallus‖ in the Encyclopaedia of Islam (de Bruijn 1995) and Yıldrım‘s work on the mahlas in Ottoman Divan literature (Yıldırım 2006).
138 tahallus in the Turkish context; however reference to studies of the pen name in
Persian literature (and sometimes Ottoman literature146) use the term takhallus.
In the Turkish context other terms are also encountered which may be considered synonymous or near-synonymous, although some writers have suggested different terms to distinguish the use in respective folk (halk) and classical (divan) literature contexts. Such terms include tapşırma, takma ad and lâkap. The term lâkap may be dispensed with for our purposes as it is little used in respect to poetry. In Turkish it refers to a ‗nickname‘ or by-name (Redhouse yeni Türkçe-İngilizce sözlük = New
Redhouse Turkish-English dictionary 1983) but also carries the sense of a formal
‗title‘ (unvan) or honorific granted by a patron associated with family position (de
Bruijn 1999, 46). Semih suggests that some poets in divan and popular (halk) writings are, nevertheless, known by their lâkap (Semih 1993, 15). Takma ad literally means ‗attached‘ or ‗appended‘ name and may also mean a ‗nickname‘. It is generally not preferred as a technical term in respect to the poetic identity as it is more properly understood as a description of the more specific terms mahlas and tapşırma147.
Tapşırma is a verbal noun derived from the verb tapşırmak (or tapşurmak) meaning to deliver or give up to another; or to recommend or commit to the care of another.
Redhouse includes the verb as being of archaic usage while the Oxford Turkish-
English dictionary does not include the verb at all. Neither Redhouse nor the Oxford
146 Walter Andrews for example employs the term tahallus in his study of Ottoman lyric poetry (Andrews 1985). 147 This distinction was made clear to me by the performer and scholar Neşe Ayışıt Onatça in a personal communication. Onatça indicated to me that takma ad is not generally encountered because ―mahlas ya da tapşırma terimini anlatırken yani açıklama amaçlı kullanılan bir ifade‖ (it is an expression used to explain or comment upon the mahlas or tapşırma). (Personal communication 16 May 2009). In fact the single definition of mahlas in the Türk Dil Kurumu dictionary is ―takma ad‖ and no definition of tapşırmak is included at all (Türkçe sözlük 2009).
139 dictionary include a definition of the gerund form (Redhouse yeni Türkçe-İngilizce sözlük = New Redhouse Turkish-English dictionary 19κ3; Hony and İz 1992). The preferred use of tapşırma to refer to the poetic signature in Turkish folk literature by some writers may be for the purpose of distinguishing the use of the signing convention by folk poets (ozan) from that of the divan (Ottoman classical) poetry148.
Doğan Kaya who provides the most substantial consideration of the tradition of taking a mahlas (mahlas alma geleneği) in his book on the aşık tradition in the Sivas region states that the name for mahlas in the language of the aşık is tapşırma and that it has the meaning of introducing or making oneself known (kendini tanıtma, bildirme, arz etme) (Kaya 1998, 92)149. The preference of some writers, including notable folklorists150, for tapşırma may also be a remnant of Turkish language reforms that have at least attempted to privilege words of Turkish origin over those of, specifically, Arabic and Persian origin151.
Birdoğan is rather more direct in his assignment of different terminologies to different traditions. Birdoğan says that in Alevi tradition the final quatrain or distich is referred to as the ―Şah beyit‖ (Shah verse) and the name sung is called the Şahadı
(literally the ‗shah name‘) or Hatayı; while the Bektaşi call this mahlas and Sunni halk ozanları call it tapşirma. He says that he learned of the use of the term Hatayı in
148 This is a distinction that Semih specifically makes (Semih 1993). 149 Kaya however uses the term mahlas in his book. 150 Ilhan Başgöz is perhaps the most notable example (Başgöz 19κ6). Interestingly in his major work on the Turkish hikâye (folk tale/romance) in discussing and analysing the lives of a number of aşık-s Başgöz gives no consideration whatsoever to the mahlas/tapşırma of the minstrel poets (Başgöz 2008). The Sivas folklorist İbrahim Aslanoğlu is another who favours the term tapşırma as in his major works on Pir Sultan Abdal and Shah Hatayi (Aslanoğlu 19κ4, 1992). Şükrü Elçin in his important article on the mahlas in Turkish folk poetry uses both terms, however in a number of other articles favours the term mahlas (Elçin 1997c). 151 Geoffrey Lewis‘s book on the Turkish language reform gives an excellent sense of how attempts to fulfil this ambition were, and are, played out; though he does not specifically refer to tapşırma in his discussion of technical terms. Öztürkmen gives a fascinating account of the major individuals and institutions involved in the establishment of folklore studies in Turkey and its relationship to Turkish national identity (Öztürkmen 1992).
140 Malatya but is unclear as to why this term is used. It is clearly a reference to the mahlas Hatâyi (or Hatai) used by Shah Ismail and Birdoğan notes that the use of the name Şah İsmail Hatai is widespread in this region (Birdoğan 1995, 40κ). Gölpınarlı also notes that the mahlas of Hatayi is treated with such exception that whenever a poet recites a poem he is asked who is the poem‘s Hatayi152. What is interesting and instructive for this study is that this may be a remnant of an earlier use of the mahlas.
In what Gallagher notes is the earliest known account of the inclusion of Shah
Ismail‘s poetry in kızılbaş ritual153, that of the Venetian envoy Michele Membré to the court of Shah Tahmasp between 1539 and 1542, we learn that they (the kızılbaş154) ―begin to sing certain songs in praise of the Shah, composed by Sh h
Ism ‗īl and the said Ţahm sp, called ατα , that is khaţ ´ī‖ (Membré 1999, 42). This, albeit brief but tantalising, reference from the early sixteenth century suggests that the specific name presented as the mahlas had, in its seminal use in kızılbaş (Alevi) ritual culture, a function that above all connected the poetry to the authority of the great Sophy (Shah). The inference of the reference is that the poems whether composed by Shah Ismail or Shah Ţahm sp (or others?) carried the mahlas form khaţ ´ī (Hatayi) or at least the poetry with this mahlas already established immanent qualities of authority and tradition that prevailed over the identification of individual authorship155.
152 Gölpınarlı is quoted by Amelia Gallagher (2004, 165-166). 153 Which we can understand as proto-Alevi ritual. 154 Membré refers to them as Sophians ―men of the Sophy [who] wear the red cap, with twelve sections‖ (Membré 1999, 26) and elsewhere describes them coming ―from the villages on foot with their instruments and khalīfa [i.e. followers]‖ (Membré 1999, 32). 155 While Gallagher does not assert that Shah Ismail ‗invented‘ the Alevi rituals still practiced today, she does argue that the poetry attributed to him (that is, to his mahlas) serves a pivotal ritual function, contributing to the meaning of such ritual by, for example, commemorating sacred presences (Gallagher 2004).
141 I have used the term mahlas in this thesis, rather than the (perhaps) more specialised tapşırma, or indeed for the possibly more specifically Alevi term, şahadı, for reasons of clarity, to assist in comparative understandings and because it is the term most widely and commonly understood and used. It is commonly understood in it specific meaning of pen name or pseudonym, and there seems little justification to try and distinguish its use from other poetic cultures by the use of a term alone. In fact, the relationship of mahlas to takhallus for example may facilitate our consideration of the use of the mahlas in the Alevi-Bektaşi tradition in comparison with the use of self-naming (takhallus, makhlas) conventions elsewhere. Perhaps most importantly however, folk poets (aşık), both Alevi and Sunni, use the term themselves, the assertions of Kaya and Birdoğan above notwithstanding. In explaining how he received his mystical poetic name the Alevi aşık and dede Dertli Divani uses the term mahlas to describe the name given to him (Atılgan 1992, ιι-78). In the orally recorded autobiography of Aşık Sabit Müdami (Ataman) – an aşık from the
Ardahan-Kars region of north-eastern Turkey, and not an Alevi – recorded by İlhan
Başgöz and reproduced in transcript by Natalie Kononenko Moyle, he also uses the term mahlas in describing how he acquired the name Müdami (Moyle 1990, 203).
It is a common practice for the poet to acknowledge his mahlas explicitly distinguishing it from his actual name or referring to the circumstances of his acquiring the mahlas. The mention of the mahlas name is commonly made while identifying an original name suggesting the mahlas reveals an identity that may be either concomitant with or transcendent of the poet‘s actual or original (or even
142 former poetic) identity. The seventeenth century Bektaşi from Diyarbakır known as